Florence-based fashion college Polimoda has announced plans to open ANARCHIVE, an interactive fashion archive dedicated to development and research in fashion studies. The space strives to become a main draw for exhibitions, workshops and conferences, with the intention of attracting industry professionals and anyone with a desire to delve into the study of fashion.
Polimoda’s Villa Favard campus already houses one of the largest fashion libraries in Europe with over 25,000 volumes of rare books, newspapers and 600 magazines, all spanning across the 19th century. This extension in Manifattura Tabacchi, a recent addition to Polimoda’s campus, will provide digital access to electronic resources such as look books, trade catalogs and other multimedia content. Four focal points make up the project: archiving, researching, training and presenting. Open to the city, anyone with experience in research, curation, archiving, styling, designing, or even students can come and broaden their fashion horizons.
“This is not a museum,” notes Massimiliano Giornetti, director of Polimoda. “Instead, it’s meant to act as a point of reference for fashion history, therefore continuing Florence’s legacy as the birthplace of Italian fashion. Furthermore, ANARCHIVE will act as a space that connects fashion to other cultural realms, such as art, science, music, photography, and cinema and emphasizes the dialogue that all of them have in relation to fashion through the archived pieces.”
An opening date has yet to be announced.
