1940s promotional poster for Le Bon Marché at the Art Décoratifs archives.

On Thursday, April 6th, 2017, the Fashion Studies Class had the chance to visit the fashion and textile section of the documentation center of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris.

The documentalist of the fashion and textile section, Emmanuelle Beuvin talked us through the mission of the museum that aims to highlight the evolution over the centuries of styles, technological innovation and the creativity of fashion designers – particularly focusing on France and Europe. The challenge of documentation and archiving, therefore, becomes to protect and respect a fragile heritage that needs to be preserved for the future.

Beuvin then discussed the museum’s digital portal, a new addition that makes information accessible to people all over the world. Her role as documentalist now includes digitizing as many materials as possible, ranging from photographs of historical dress to contemporary clothing, accessories, and drawings.

In her everyday job,  Emmanuelle Beuvin receives all kinds of publications, advertisements, invitations asking her to sort, organize and arrange in order to keep a consistency in the treatment of documents. She confides that this is a real challenge since she is the only documentalist for the fashion section to tackle this sizeable work.

We had a captivating exchange with Emmanuelle Beuvin who told us about her atypical career, which began with specialized studies in marketing and sales, then in management and finally in documentary engineering. She knew how to pass on her passion for the preservation of fashion heritage, which has become more than a job for her, but rather a kind of mission.

Some runway invitations from designer Dries Van Noten at the Art Décoratifs Archives.

At the end of the visit she allowed us to stay for a while in the documentation center to consult what we wanted. We were fortunate enough to be able to lose ourselves in this wealth of materials and especially to have access to a reserved and protected heritage as for example certain invitations of Maison Martin Margiela. All of the students came out of this visit wide-eyed, inspired and extremely lucky to have been able to access this incredible heritage.

 

Text by Adriano Appelius.

Photos by Tala S.A. All images courtesy of the Les Art Décoratifs archive room.