Fashion Collections, Fashion Museums and Fashion Libraries in Germany
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Fashions throughout the ages are traditionally on display in art museums, museums of applied art or, as they are called these days, design museums. They focus on fashion being a cultural artefact and object of everyday use, as well as on the garment itself being a design product.
The exhibitions they hold enable creative fashion design to be viewed as a separate entity far removed from the world of commerce and mass fashion. At the same time it is also seen as a form of aesthetic, hand-crafted, conceptual design. |
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Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Galleries)
The collection includes the wedding suit of Duke August of Saxony dating from 1548, the “Spanish Costume” of Moritz the Elector, the wedding trousseaux of Duke Johann Georg I of Saxony from the beginning of the 17th century and pontifical gloves made of silk and gold thread from the 16th century. These splendid pieces can only be viewed when on display as part of a special exhibition.
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Unlike fashion shows, shop-openings and similar media events, exhibitions serve as a democratic venue, accessible to everybody. They are places where the object can be contemplated and where the form, material, cut, processing and concept of haute couture and designer fashion can be explained to the people in an extensively authentic, “neutral” way with the aid of various narrative approaches.
There is however one problem that has befallen all fashion exhibitions – having to display clothing without the help of the human body. The absence of the human body and, of course the eroticism that goes with it, causes a garment to just hang like an empty sheath and deprives us of the satisfaction we usually enjoy. Another problem facing the organisers of permanent exhibitions is the fragility of the clothes themselves. Clothes that hang on dummies for long periods of time are equally as adversely affected by “normal” lighting, fluctuations in temperature or air pollution as other clothes. This is the reason why they normally have to be displayed in glass cabinets and have to be replaced with other exhibits on a regular basis, in order to protect them from prematurely wearing out. Furthermore the physical shape of the exhibition dummies has to be adapted to the demands of historical clothing (and not the other way round). Undergarments like corsets or hooped skirts – most of which are no longer available – have to be reproduced to make sure the clothes hang properly. If you disregard archaeological museums, in which garments from the Bronze and Iron Ages as well as the early Middle Ages are on display, most collections of historical clothing focus on the much later epochs of the 18th, 19 and 20th centuries. There are only a few museums showing rare pieces from the 16th and 17th centuries and these are only open to the experts. The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Galleries) have adopted some of theses rarities as their own. Some textile treasures from the Renaissance and Baroque periods (and beyond even) have also found a home in the Bayerische Nationalmuseum (Bavarian National Museum) in Munich. Arranged in order of topic, the historical fashions of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Germanic National Museum) in Nuremberg are particularly worth seeing, as well as the costume and textile collection of the Württembergisches Landesmuseum at the Fashion Museum in the Castle of Ludwigsburg. Extraordinary special exhibitions on the subject of fashion are being held all the time for example at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, the Museum für angewandte Kunst in Cologne, the Focke Museum - Bremer Landesmuseum für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte, the Historische Museum der Stadt Frankfurt am Main, the Badische Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe and the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin with its amazing collection by Wolfgang Ruf and Martin Kamer, as well as one by Uli Richter that deals with more recent German fashion history. It was the private collection of Hilda Sandtner that gave way to the Textilmuseum Mindelheim that has adopted an educational approach to textiles and fashion. Since January 2002 the Max Berk private collection has been part of the arts and crafts section at the Kurpfälzisches Museum in Heidelberg-Ziegelhausen. What is particularly lamentable is the fact that museums are being closed down. For example, the fashion section of the Stadtmuseum Berlin with its stock of 5000 dresses and just as many accessories. After merging with the Märkisches Museum Ost this museum was able to give us a perfect, complete picture of the fashion history of the GDR. The fashion section of the Stadtmuseum München has unfortunately been closed, too. |
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Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München (Bavarian National Museum)
The collection comprises representative garments donated by Bavarian nobility, commoners clothes, traditional costumes (from the Popular Art collection), as well as collections of shoes and fans. There is one particularly rare and very much admired piece – a costume for one of those little monkeys that were often to be found at the courts of the nobility and royalty. It consists of a skirt, waistcoat and pants made of embroidered silk brocade. Clothes connected with certain people are always of special interest and are presented in their historical context as a permanent exhibition, like the vestments from the vaults of the princely house of Lauingen from the first half of the 17th century and the traditional national costumes of King Otto of Greece, the son of Ludwig I of Bavaria, and his wife, Amalie, from the middle of the 19th century.
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Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Germanic National Museum) in Nuremberg
The collection of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum is particularly famous for its rare examples of historical traditional costumes, as well as for fashion accessories and sports clothing.
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Modemuseum im Schloss Ludwigsburg (Fashion Museum in the Castle of Ludwigsburg)
The emphasis here is on the period between the 18th century up to 1970 with Haute Couture from Worth, Fortuny, Lanvin, Chanel, Dior and with designer fashions from Courrèges, Quant, Miyake und Yamamoto. Alongside all these fashion icons the museum also displays rare pieces of clothing from the world war periods sewn from sugar sacks or from tablecloths – most of them mended and patched – and all of them bearing witness to more difficult times.
Hutmuseum (Hat Museum) des Städtischen Museums in Bad Homburg
The Hutmuseum (Hat Museum) des Städtischen Museums in Bad Homburg exemplifies the social importance of headwear – from top hats to baseball caps, not forgetting of course the famous Homburg hat.
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Concept Museums
The Deutsche Ledermuseum und Schuhmuseum (German Leather and Shoe Museum) in Offenbach is devoted to leather and all the traditions that go with it. For hats it is the Hutmuseum (Hat Museum) des Städtischen Museums in Bad Homburg.
When it comes to saving space, button museums are a considerably more viable option, like the one in Bärnau (Upper Palatinate) or the Knopf & Knopf – International Button Museum in Warthausen/Upper Swabia. Here the emphasis is on interactive communication with young people. Private Museums
There is in fact these days a very small number of private fashion museums and archives that would never have come into existence without the idealism, enormous interest and inexhaustible personal efforts of a few private individuals. Here it is worth mentioning the Modemuseum Schloss Meyenburg. There is however one advantage private museums enjoy and really should exploit – beyond merely maintaining the artefacts, they are able to promote the joy of actually wearing and experiencing historical costumes by loaning them out for historical parades or for study purposes. This means, for example, that they loan out less valuable costumes to students of stage- and film-costume design, as well as fashion designers or to traditional costume societies so that they can make a pattern – “hands-on history” so to speak.
Textile and Industrial Museums
Textile and industrial museums tend to lean more towards the conservation and restoration of non-garment textiles rather than clothes. One of the leading centres in this field is the Deutsche Textilmuseum (German Textile Museum) in Krefeld. Unfortunately this museum only opens its gates to visitors if it has a temporary exhibition on display. When it opens in 2009, the Bayerische Textil- und Industriemuseum (Bavarian Textile and Industrial Museum) in Augsburg – called tim for short - will welcome its visitors not only with great enthusiasm, but also with an excellent online presentation. The one-time worsted yarn mill in Augsburg, as well as the former Neue Augsburger cotton factory are left-overs from what used to be a booming industry – an industry whose historical, economic, social and cultural background has to be delved into and then exhibited in true fashionable style. The Rheinische Industriemuseum (Rhenish Industrial Museum) has already had a modicum of success with a similar idea; it has been holding temporary exhibitions dealing with special themes such as fashion, clothes care and ideals of beauty in old textile mills in Ratingen and Euskirchen, making quite a name for itself.
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Deutsches Ledermuseum und Schuhmuseum (German Leather and Shoe Museum) in Offenbach
Alongside an ethnological section there is a collection of suitcases and bags, as well as a shoe museum amply endowed with footwear from four millennia – a veritable paradise for accessory fans.
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Archives
It is not just the item of clothing that is important when documenting the history of fashion, but also the way the clothes were marketed and how they were accepted by consumers. This is why museums and libraries also archive fashion sketches, photographs, fashion magazines and advertising material.
Berlin’s fashion library, the Kunstbibliothek der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, is known all over the world – it is sometimes also called the Lipperheidesche Kostümbibliothek. The collection consists of app. 38,000 books on the subject of fashion and clothing and app. 70,000 fashion images. It was first set up back in the year 1899 on the initiative of Frieda and Franz von Lipperheide – the benefactors responsible for the Royal Museums in Berlin. |
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Literatur zum Thema
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The von Parish Kostümbibliothek (von Parish Costume Library) in Munich can also be traced back to the work of a private collector – Hermine von Parish (1907 – 1998). Her unique costume library comprises printed images, hand-drawn sketches and books from the 16th – 20th century, magazines and photographs from 18th century right up to the present day. The von Parish Costume Library in the Munich suburb of Nymphenburg has been a section of the Stadtmuseum (Munich City Museum) since 1970. The number of visitors remains quite low however as now a fee has to be paid by people doing research. Over the last few years fashion, both as a design object as well as a cultural legacy, has been able to consolidate its presence beyond the commercial aspect. The decisive reason for this was the fact that fashion, media and art are much more closely aligned these days – this can only be of benefit to museums, collections and archives.
Dr. Ingrid Loschek |
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online-redaktion@goethe.deRelated links
- Museum of Arts and Crafts (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe), Hamburg
- Neues Museum – Staatliches Museum für Kunst und Design (i.e. New Museum – State Museum of Art and Design), Nuremberg
- Baden State Museum (Museum at the Market Square), Karlsruhe
- Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
- Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München (Bavarian National Museum)
- Museum für angewandte Kunst Köln (Museum of Applied Art, Cologne)
- Historical Museum o the City of Frankurt-am-Main
- Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin (Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin)
- Textilmuseum Mindelheim (Mindelheim Textile Museum)
- German Leather Museum in Offenbach
- Knopf & Knopf (International Button Museum)
- Modemuseum Schloss Meyenburg (Fashion Museum in the Castle of Meyenburg)
- tim - (Bavarian Textile and Industrial museum)
- Rheinisches Industriemuseum (Rhenish Industrial Museum) in Ratingen
- Landesmuseum Württemberg
- Kunstbibliothek der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (Berlin’s Fashion Library)
