Musées et Maisons de Mode

Since the 2000s the majority of fashion houses have increasingly invested in the creation of archives and heritage departments which are supporting and informing the work of artistic directors and their teams. While being absent from brand’s organizational structure for a long time, these departments meticulously record all sources of creations, whether they are documentary, clothing or textile, and help to restore the stories of brands’ founders and designers.

Heritage departments and brand archives are clearly showing their cultural and media importance of fashion especially seen the increasing growth of fashion exhibitions and museums around the world with ever-increasing numbers of visitors to these events. However, this tendency is rooted in the 1980s when the revival of the historical names of fashion and the emergence of artistic directors dictated a new function for the past. In this way, archives and heritage departments have been able to impose themselves inside brands and increase the rich and valuable heritage previously covered only by the museums themselves.

Azzedine Alaïa is a precursor of this tendency as he carefully preserved, since 1968, not only his own creations but also those of the masters of the past whom he admired, thus prefiguring, several decades before, the cultural and artistic value of this fashion patrimony. The Alaïa Foundation is honored to host this symposium in the presence of:

4pm - Introduction (Carla Sozzani, Olivier Saillard, Marco Pecorari)
4:10pm - 4:30pm Stefania Ricci – Ferragamo Museum
4:30pm - 4:50pm Olivier Flaviano – DIOR La Galerie
4:50pm - 5:10pm Elsa Janssen – Musée YSL Paris
5:10pm - 5:30pm Olivier Saillard – Azzedine Alaïa Foundation
5:30pm - 6pm Round table discussion moderated by Marco Pecorari with the participation of Miren Arzalluz (Palais Galliera)