Rethinking Fashion Storytelling Through Digital Archives and Immersive Museum Experiences

The Italian fashion system is represented by a wide and valuable heritage that needs to be properly preserved and experienced by everybody, from fashion students to scholars, artisans and designers, etc. Although in the last decades there have been many attempts to create a museum dedicated specifically to Italian fashion, in the end, institutions or museums have not been able to carry out a valuable and accomplished project. One fundamental reason is represented by the Italian specificities in terms of the fashion-industry evolution and, more in general, by the complexity of the fashion system which has been built and continues to grow at the crossroads between different experiences, practices, and relations. As such, it has been studied from diverse disciplines and approaches ranging from art to design, from economics to sociology of culture, and so on. Moreover, when considering both the intangible and tangible fashion heritage, gathering them in order to preserve and share them becomes extremely difficult. The challenge is therefore to understand how to collect, preserve, and enjoy this heritage, combining the cultural pluralism of local traditions and their products, together with the creativity of artists and designers and the economic aspects of the industry, relating them all with the cultural and social features of everyday life-fashion. The aim of this paper is to address these issues starting from the preliminary reflections of the PNRR project (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza, National Recovery and Resilience Plan) “Cultural heritage active innovation for next-gen sustainable society”, (CHANGES aims at promoting interdisciplinary research and inter-sectorial synergies to support the development of innovative long-term strategies for the interpretation, understanding, conservation, and valorization of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The extended partnership is composed of 11 Universities, 4 Research Institutions, 3 Advanced Studies Schools, 6 Companies, and 1 Center of Excellence (see https://sites.google.com/uniroma1.it/changes/home).) in order to discuss in detail the Spoke 2, “Creativity and Intangible Heritage” thematic line on fashion preservation and its musealization as developed by the authors of this essay.