Europeana Fashion 1st INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

FASHION INDUSTRY AND THE GLAM COMMUNITY

Florence, 17-18 April 2013

Conference outline

Fashion is a domain with multiple dimensions: on one side it is based on fast changes, trends, moods of the moment, on the other it is based on reflection, on the cyclic evolution of an historical, social and economical phenomena, typical of the postmodern industrial culture; it has internationally become a major field of research in cultural studies, it is an extraordinary viewpoint on contemporaneity, but it is still relatively new and unexplored. Fashion offers a rich platform of reflection on key individual, social and cultural issues from practices of consumption and production, to the ones of creating roles and identities.

In the last two decades fashion has acquired a growing “cultural” dimension and it’s now globally accepted as a discipline that has a central place in the scene of expressive phenomena. Fashion and culture became increasingly interconnected and it is now usual to see continuous trespassing and new synergies between fashion and other cultural expressions: art, first of all the others, for the fact that they both are dealing with creativity and they serve in more than a way each other purposes: while fashion gets inspired with art, art learns the reproducibility from fashion. In this perspective it is easy to understand how, recently art came on catwalks and fashion moved from the shop window to the most “sacred” museums and cultural locations as a piece of art in curatorial exhibitions that have revealed themselves as real blockbusters.

But this is just one aspect of this multi-faced relationship: the importance of fashion heritage and its cultural relevance today is recognized not only in museum collections, but where fashion itself is created: in the fashion brands and in their archives. Fashion heritage has turned up to be much more than an asset of a fashion brand: it is something that deals with its own identity: Brand archives do not only keep a number of documents and old clothes or cherish the memory of the founder’s dream, they create codes, they focus on keeping alive the identity of the brand and its values.

On the other side, museums, libraries and their collections, academic institutions by keeping and curating styles, objects and images from the past are a fundamental source of inspiration and reflection for modern creativity: their contents and treasures need to be easily accessed and researched, studied, compared, remixed. Internet, new media, new research and digitalization tools are disclosing incredible sources and spreading news, information and ideas as never before.

The conference aims to explore and discuss traditional and new aspects of the relations between fashion, culture and media from a number of theoretical perspectives, but also by practical experiences and different points of view, bringing together prominent voices and experiences form the field. The idea is to create the opportunity of over viewing all the possible interconnections and synergies between Fashion Industry and the GLAM community going beyond the concept of Fashion Heritage and culture, or the difference between old and new and trying to understand and explore new possibilities and limits in their relationship.

The Europeana Fashion conference will be structured in two sessions, a plenary one on the 17th of April and a workshop session about "Handling New Media in Fashion" on the 18th. A detailed program can be found at http://www.europeanafashion.eu/conference. Conference admission is free of charge.

Here is the list of confirmed speakers:

Valerie Steele (Director, Museum at FIT New York)

Laudomia Pucci (President, Fondazione Emilo Pucci)

Raffaello Napoleone (CEO, Pitti Immagine)                                                     

Kaat Debo (Director, MoMU Antwerp)              

Sonnet Stanfill (Curator, XXth century Fashion, V&A)                       

Linda Loppa (Dean of Polimoda)           

Louise Wallenberg (Professor, Stockholm University)

Maria Luisa Frisa (Director, Fashion Program IUAV University)                      

Stefania Ricci (Director, Museo Ferragamo)

Adelheid Rasche (Curator, Lipperheide Library Berlin)

Agnès Rocamora (London College of Fashion)

Marie Schuller (SHOWstudio, London)

Gabriele Monti (Fashion Program IUAV University)

Alessandra Arezzi Boza (Communication Director, Europeana Fashion)

Fabio Quaranta (Designer)

Maria Canella (Professor, MIC - Politecnico di Milano)

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg (Editor and Curator, Vestoj)

Geer Oskam (Senior Marketing Specialist, Europeana Foundation)

Marco Percorari (PhD candidate, Stockholm University)