Refashioning And Redress

This volume explores the conservation and presentation of dress in museums and beyond as a complex, collaborative process. Recognizing this process as a dynamic interaction of investigation, interpretation, intervention, re-creation, and display, Refashioning and Redress: Conserving and Displaying Dress examines the ways in which these seemingly static exhibitions of “costume” or “fashion” are actively engaged in cultural production. The seventeen case studies included here reflect a broad range of practice and are presented by conservators, curators, makers, and researchers from around the world, exposing changing approaches and actions at different times and in different places. Ranging from the practical to the conceptual, these contributions demonstrate the material, social, and philosophical interactions inherent in the conservation and display of dress and draw upon diverse disciplines ranging from dress history to social history, material cultural studies to fashion studies, and conservation to museology. Case studies include fashion as spectacle in the museum, dress as political and personal memorialization, and theatrical dress, as well as dress from living indigenous cultures, dress in fragments, and dress online.

In 1997, Saul Friedländer emphasized the need for an integrated history of the Holocaust. His suggestion to connect ‘the policies of the perpetrators, the attitudes of surrounding society, and the world of the victims’ provides the inspiration for this volume. Following in these footsteps, this innovative study approaches Holocaust history through a combination of macro analysis with micro studies. Featuring a range of contemporary research from emerging scholars in the field, this peer-reviewed volume provides detailed engagement with a variety of historical sources, such as documents, artifacts, photos, or text passages. The contributors investigate particular aspects of sound, materiality, space and social perceptions to provide a deeper understanding of the Holocaust, which have often been overlooked or generalised in previous historical research. Yet, as we approach an era of no first hand witnesses, this multidisciplinary, micro-historical approach remains a fundamental aspect of Holocaust research, and can provide a theoretical framework for future studies.

This book is available as open access through the Knowledge Unlatched programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. "A remarkable resource for the field of fashion studies suitable for both newcomers ... {and] seasoned practitioners." - Fashion Historia "A precious source in the study of the subject ... inspiring." - The Journal of Dress History The last decade has seen the growing popularity and visibility of fashion as a cultural product, including its growing presence in museum exhibitions. This book explores the history of fashion displays, highlighting the continuity of past and present curatorial practices. Comparing and contrasting exhibitions from different museums and decades-from the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 to the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011, and beyond-it makes connections between museum fashion and the wider fashion industry. By critically analyzing trends in fashion exhibition practice over the 20th and early 21st centuries, Julia Petrov defines and describes the varied representations of historical fashion within British and North American museum exhibitions. Rooted in extensive archival research on exhibitions by global leaders in the field-from the Victoria and Albert and the Bath Fashion Museum to the Brooklyn and the Royal Ontario Museums-the work reveals how fashion exhibitions have been shaped by the values and anxieties associated with fashion more generally. Supplemented by parallel critical approaches, including museological theory, historiography, body theory, material culture, and visual studies, Fashion, History, Museums demonstrates that in an increasingly corporate and mass-mediated world, fashion exhibitions must be analysed in a comparative and global context. Richly illustrated with 70 images, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion history and museology, as well as curators, conservators, and exhibition designers.

The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa has been celebrated as an international leader for its bicultural concept and partnership with Māori in all aspects of the museum, but how does this relationship with the indigenous partner work in practice? Biculturalism at New Zealand’s National Museum reveals the challenges, benefits and politics of implementing a bicultural framework in everyday museum practice. Providing an analysis of the voices of museum employees, the book reflects their multifaceted understandings of biculturalism and collaboration. Based on a year of intensive fieldwork behind the scenes at New Zealand’s national museum and drawing on 68 interviews and participant observations with 18 different teams across the organisation, this book examines the interactions and cultural clashes between Māori and non-Māori museum professionals in their day-to-day work. Documenting and analysing contemporary museum practices, this account explores how biculturalism is enacted, negotiated, practised and envisioned on different stages within the complex social institution that is the museum. Lessons learnt from Te Papa will be valuable for other museums, NGOs, the public service and organisations facing similar issues around the world. Biculturalism at New Zealand’s National Museum addresses a gap in the literature on biculturalism and reaffirms the importance of ethnography to the anthropological enterprise and museum studies research. As such, it will be essential reading for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of cultural anthropology, museum anthropology, museum studies, and Māori studies or indigenous studies. It should also be of great interest to museum professionals.

The human body lies at the centre of our relationship to fashion and textiles. Crafting Anatomies explores how the body has become a catalyst for archival research, creative dialogues and hybrid fabrications in fashion design. Focusing on how our response to the corporeal has shifted over time, the book looks at how it is currently influencing design and socio-material practices. With contributions from a multidisciplinary range of scholars and researchers, Crafting Anatomies examines how new technologies have become integrated with traditional fashion and textiles techniques, bringing together art, science and biomedical approaches. Traversing the cutting-edge of design research, the chapters take us from the forgotten lives of historical garments to the potential of biofabrication to cross the boundaries between skin and textile. Illustrated with 120 images visualising original research, the book reveals how the human body continues to inspire future design, from historical wearables to prosthetic limbs and 3D-printed footwear. In doing so, it provides an inspiring account of how fashion and textile culture now impacts socio-creativity and the formation of contemporary identity.

This second edition of Textile Conservation offers an up-to-date perspective on the role and practice of textile conservators, capturing the diversity of textile conservation work across the globe. The volume considers key factors that are integral to effective conservation decision-making. It achieves this by focusing on four major factors that have influenced development in textile conservation practice over the past decades: the changing context, an evolution in the way conservators think about objects, the greater involvement of stakeholders, and technical development. Features of the new edition include: Updated chapters that explain new techniques and recent developments in the field; New and updated international case studies that demonstrate conservation decision-making in practice, including assessments of the conservation of objects in some of the world’s major cultural institutions; Full-colour illustrations that demonstrate conservation in practice. Textile Conservation will be essential reading for conservators around the world. It will also be of great interest to academics and students engaged in the study of the conservation of textiles, as well as museum and heritage professionals.

This vibrant publication brings to life four centuries of extraordinary garments and accessories inspired by the natural world. Offering new ways for understanding and experiencing a garment’s inherent artistry, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion explores clothing’s complex relationship with the body through the senses. Engaging texts by scholars, scientists, and conservators reveal the history behind over 200 works of fashion while also addressing their fragility and ephemerality. Exceptional new photography by Nick Knight of creations by international couturiers and design houses—including Cristòbal Balenciaga, Thom Browne, Collina Strada, Christian Dior, Gucci, Charles James, LOEWE, Madame Grès, Thebe Magugu, Maison Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Issey Miyake, Paul Poiret, Yves Saint Laurent, Elsa Schiaparelli, Bea Szenfeld, Philip Treacy, Iris van Herpen, Louis Vuitton, and Charles Frederick Worth—further deepens our appreciation for each object’s sensorial integrity.

There is now a widespread interest in reuse in many domains, from opera houses built over old warehouses, to vintage clothes and everyday goods incorporating repurposed materials or parts. Despite its ubiquity, this extensive creative work is typically seen in narrowly environmental terms, as a means of reducing carbon, resource use or waste. However, as this volume shows, reuse also has aesthetic and cultural dimensions and a rich social currency, invoked to consciously subvert the accelerated consumer culture responsible for our unfolding environmental crisis. In three parts, the essays in this book consider reuse in terms of values, aesthetics and meaning, its application in contemporary urban and spatial settings, and the revival of social practices involving a more conscious recourse to reuse and repair. These are bookended by the editors' essays: the first, on the significant relationship between reuse and technological and social acceleration evident in the surrounding consumer society; and the last, on the multiple forms of reuse deployed in a contemporary alternative building practice, and their contributions to presenting alternative ways of living in the world. Challenging dominant understandings of ‘waste’ and ‘consumption’, Subverting Consumerism shows how reuse has become a means for many to creatively engage with the past, and to discover a continuity and sense of place eroded by the accelerative regimes of contemporary consumerism. Becoming a means of resistance, and offering a range of aesthetic, social and economic possibilities, reuse can be found to subvert and challenge the obsessive quest for the new found in contemporary consumerism.