Berlin’s unique educational tradition in the various fashion schools is best illustrated by the teachers’ and students’ fashion designs. They are works of outstanding quality, often painted in an expressive style rich in colour and detail. This cooperative project aims to digitise a selection of these drawings and present them in an online exhibition on in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library).
The Stadtmuseum’s Sammlung Mode und Textilien (Fashion and Textiles Collection), the Lette Verein Archive and the Kunstbibliothek’s (Art Library) Photography Collection use exemplary works from their holdings to highlight fashion education and especially the tradition of fashion drawing used in Berlin. The Kunstbibliothek, for example, is presenting Reimann-School student Marie Schulz’s exquisite costume designs she created for the school’s legendary Carnival celebrations. In future, the digitized works will be viewable on the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library) and Europeana portals. Students from the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) are examining the various fashion and costume designs’ historical and contextual connections in an Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library) online exhibition.
The Berlin fashion schools’ designs offer further proof of the extraordinary cultural and historical significance of fashion in Berlin. Representative individuals from these educational institutions will be presented as part of the project. In view of the prevalence of digital technologies in contemporary education, a focus will be on fashion design as a visualisation medium of intergenerational learning.
Research teams: Lette Verein: Jana Haase, Sophie Hofmann; Stadtmuseum: Katja Remus; Kunstbibliothek: Dr Britta Bommert; HTW Berlin: Prof. Dr Dorothee Haffner
Cooperation partners: Lette Verein Berlin, Historical Archive; Stiftung Stadtmuseum, Sammlung Mode und Textilien; Lipperheide Costume Library, Fashion Image Collection, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; HTW Berlin, Faculty 5 (Design and Culture)
Funded by: digiS – Funding programme for the digitisation of cultural assets in the State of Berlin, 2021
Duration: 1 January to 31 December 2021
Project website: currently under development