Archivio #9

When did fashion become obsessed with its own history?

In the new issue of ARCHIVIO, Guest Editor-in-Chief Stefano Tonchi, joined by Marco Pecorari, offers a mapping of the fashion archives international landscape at this moment in time and an overview of the many typologies and studies happening in the world we live in, divided in three—very porous—sections: ‘Public & Institutional’, ‘Brands & Strategies’, ‘Private & Personal’.
The first section, ‘Public & Institutional’, includes museums, galleries and other public institutions that collect, archive and show fashion, creating a public institutionalization of fashion in archives and collections. ‘Brands & Strategies’ documents the birth, the evolution and the marketing of the archive of Designers and Brands. The ‘Private & Personal’ section is a space where many new studies on fashion archives are happening, with private collections interacting with personal researches, many focused on the social and political themes of our times, diversity, gender and race.
The Fashion Issue also includes a special poster: an (in)complete mapping of the countless fashion archives in Italy. A research by Promemoria visually processed by Accurat. The result is a map that is also a small work of art.

Archivio is an innovative publishing project which focus will be exclusively on the archive’s culture and reality. It is the first time that a publishing venture is born out of the need to enhance this huge heritage. Every issue will be constructed around a theme, but in a loose way, browsing from art to fashion, culture, sport, design, cinema, science, photography… No barriers.