Europeana Fashion

Together with 21 other enthusiastic museums and private archives, the Centraal Museum has been joining forces since March 2012 to shape a European fashion database: Europeana Fashion. The first fruits of this partnership can now be found at europeanafashion.eu. In addition to garments, you will find drawings, fashion photos, catalogues, websites and blogs.

Fashion is increasingly valued as an integral part of our culture. A fashion image reflects a society on both a personal and social level, while fashion design is at the same time part of the arts spectrum. Since the beginning of the 20th century, European museums have been collecting garments and accessories for these reasons, so that we can now draw on a rich international collection of fashion-related heritage. Europeana fashion brings together the growing number of collections online and makes them accessible to international audiences.

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Europeana Fashion and the Centraal Museum

In the fashion and costume collection, 18th-century silk robes with floral patterns coexist with conceptual fashion by Iris van Herpen or Viktor & Rolf. Costumes have been part of the collection since the early years. Since 1921, there has been an ambitious collection policy. The costume curator wrote letters to noble families asking if there were still “old clothes in the attic”. Thanks to these efforts - and those of her successors - almost every silhouette in costume history since 1750 can be found in the collection. Since the late 1990s, the collection policy has focused more on conceptual and international fashion, which prefers to push the boundaries of their own discipline.

The Centraal Museum's fashion and costume collection now consists of more than 10,000 objects that are unlocked in a European context via Europeana Fashion. It's not just about fashion design. Images of fashion exhibitions, brochures and fashion catalogues are also included in Europeana Fashion.

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