Back to a Fashionable Future: Fashion Taste-making Through Time

Matthews, Rachel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3561-6166 (2016) Back to a Fashionable Future: Fashion Taste-making Through Time. In: Fashioning Museums Conference, 1 February 2016 - 3 February 2016, Australia National University, Canberra, Australia.

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Abstract

This article examines the role of museums in the making (and re-making) of fashion’s history. It argues that the history of fashion plays an underpinning role in many aspects of contemporary fashion and as such the retelling of fashion’s history in museum exhibitions can influence our understanding of its past and how it intersects with the present. Historically, museums have been viewed as places of canonical knowledge, perceived as impartial educational environments in which scholars and students learn about previous eras through the study of exemplars and associated information from the period. More recently the fashion exhibition has become a significant site for cultural production, functioning as a public event offering entertainment, information and education. Further, museums and galleries have seen the commercial potential in offering crowd-pleasing fashion exhibitions, either based around their own collections or franchised from globally renowned institutions. In order to inspire an increasingly well-informed fashion consumer to visit yet another fashion exhibition, museums are finding increasingly inventive ways to frame aspects of fashion history. This article argues that museums have begun to influence contemporary fashion and fashionable tastes through the creative re-telling and remaking of the people, places and preferences of fashion’s past. The study examines a number of recent fashion exhibitions, their promotional strategies and publications to investigate museums and their influence as contemporary tastemakers.