Developing the perfect fashion archive

It is common practice for designers to draw inspiration from fashion garment archives. Many established companies and fashion houses hold their own private archives, going back to their company’s beginnings. These collections provide invaluable resources that are essential to fashion designers who constantly draw inspiration from them when developing new ranges, they use them to re-examine, reconstruct and re-evaluate the design process, as can be see by the following quote:

Christopher Bailey- always up for a rummage in the archives- has obviously had some great fun. Never too obvious- there’s no reissues here- he instead infuses heritage into modern pieces

The ability of students to understand the use of archives as primary research material when designing is essential. Archives become key learning resources that provided an understanding of the use of physical garments to create and inspire the design process. Current fashion archives tend to be large; however there is a need for small teaching archives to be established on a more manageable scale. Archives are held with specific aims in mind with their planning and development being essential.
This article discusses what would constitute the perfect fashion archive for a fashion department. Researching the creation of a specialist fashion reference collection that functions as a teaching aid within a department with limited space and finances.