Mapping Campania’s Fashion Heritage: Archives and Museums

Abstract

The objective of mapping fashion heritage, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses in relation to ongoing transformations, as envisaged by RHITA for the Historical Research Unit of the University of Campania, requires a broad analytical perspective and the adoption of a specific critical framework of investigation. In this regard, on the one hand, the choice of a regional scale is considered appropriate in order to bring out differences in relation to the national context, in connection with the broader aim of enhancing local cultural heritage and strengthening the regional productive and manufacturing system. On the other hand, the need to observe regional museum and archival institutions through the lens of reshaping calls for a targeted approach which, beyond the analytical census itself, is able to identify exemplary cases that respond to contemporary change through heritage marketing and fashion heritage policies and projects. On these premises, the contribution presents the results of the comparative investigations conducted and proposes a revision of the criteria traditionally adopted for the census of fashion archives and museums, emphasising the value of those historical institutions active in Campania which, while preserving their identity and values, have updated themselves in accordance with the cultural demands of the present.