The digital garment: Perspectives on the image and the museum fashion collection database

Digitization of fashion and costume collections is a priority effort for many institutions worldwide. This study intends to examine the content of text and images within the fashion collection database record and how the viewer can extrapolate information beyond the discovery of the object or the given specifications about the object itself. While the digital reproduction may not be able to produce the ‘entire biography’, nor the complete ‘tactile aspect’, of the original object, it is possible for the digital image to provide much valuable contextual and historical information for the curator or researcher. Through an analysis of records in selected online collection databases of fashion, this study proposes to examine how images and their accompanying records can illuminate curatorial decision-making, changing museum and institutional practices, and the life of an object before and after museum acquisition, as well as approximate the sensations so important to the experience and understanding of clothing – texture and embodiment.