New Google project digitises world’s top fashion archives

Anyone who has waited on a long, snaking line to get into a fashion exhibition at a top museum knows just how popular they’ve become and more broadly, how fashion is increasingly seen as a form of artistic and cultural expression.

Google Inc. is acknowledging this reality by expanding its Google Art Project — launched in 2011 to virtually link users with art collections around the world — to include fashion.

Up close

The new initiative, “We Wear Culture”, uses Google’s technology to connect fashion lovers to collections and exhibits at museums and other institutions, giving them the ability to not only view a garment, but to zoom in on the hem of a dress, examine a sleeve or a bit of embroidery on a gown up close, wander around an atelier, or sit down with Metropolitan Museum of Art costume restorers.

The project partners with more 180 cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Japan’s Kyoto Costume Institute, and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.

The site also offers specially curated exhibits. You can click your way to, for example, a curated photo exhibit on Tokyo Street Style, or an exploration of women’s gowns in the 18th century. You can search by designer, or by their muse examining, say, Marilyn Monroe’s love of Ferragamo stiletto heels, via the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo in Florence, Italy.

At a preview demonstration this week, Amit Sood, director of the Google Cultural Institute,explained that he wasn’t initially clued into the possibilities for fashion, because at the tech giant, “we all wear hoodies.”

But, he said, collaborating with an institution like the Met showed him that “art and fashion have a long history together.” The idea behind the new project, he said, is to tell the story or rather, the multiple stories behind fashion.

Inside story

There are several virtual reality films included in the project. A 360-degree video displays the Met’s conservation studio, with conservators explaining how they keep delicate clothing strong enough for display. One of the conservators explained that the team uses needles designed for eye surgeons.

It is the ultimate fragility of clothes, though, that makes the project appealing to museum curators, explained Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s head curator. Many garments are too delicate to be permanently displayed but digitising a collection makes it viewable forever.