Fashion on Display: Exploring dress museology, fashion museology and new museology in the exhibitions Temporary Fashion Museum and Out of Fashion
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2017-10-30
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en
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Fashion in museums has become an omnipresent phenomenon over the last decades. The history of exhibiting costume and fashion in museums for its own sake started around the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, fashion exhibitions have gone through several changes. Fashion historian Marie Riegels Melchior distinguishes between three different time periods of fashion in museums. In the first period a dress museology was prevalent; in the second period a fashion museology started to take shape; and in the third period, which comprises our present day, this fashion museology has been fully established, serving as an alternative to a new museology, according to Melchior. Melchior argues that contemporary fashion exhibitions are superficial and traditional in the way they address the topic of fashion. By looking at two recent Dutch fashion exhibitions, the Temporary Fashion Museum and Out of Fashion, and the ways dress museology, fashion museology and new museology are incorporated and relate to one another in these exhibitions, I am disproving her argument. In the first chapter, the literature review, I give an overview of definitions and characteristics of the three museologies. In the second chapter, I provide a thick description, analysis and interpretation of the Temporary Fashion Museum. In the third chapter, I provide a thick description, analysis and interpretation of Out of Fashion. In the conclusion, I return to the main research question and provide an answer by giving a summary of the previous two chapters. From these findings, I can conclude that the Temporary Fashion Museum and Out of Fashion are versatile, intelligent, engaging, inclusive and experimental fashion exhibitions that have much to offer to visitors and do not fail to address societal issues related to the current fashion industry.
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