Expanded Archive: designing the new digital fashion archives

In the contemporary scenario, technology has allowed the enjoyment of cultural heritage even to users who would have been excluded from this practice due to the dislocation of artifacts in physical buildings, historically deputed to their preservation. In an article on the possible end of design, design historian Vanni Pasca (2020) praises its mutability about the pervasiveness of digital and upcoming technologies central to the contemporary period. According to this, the design also finds its application within the new practices of digital display of material held by Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAMs) (The University of British Columbia, 2023). GLAMs have developed collaborations to enable the enjoyment of materials through online and offline digital technologies. Therefore, it has been necessary to reorganize and shape their practices to ensure seamless navigation and enjoyment of such content across entities, spreading knowledge across the community. This transformation has also affected archives, which represent institutions’ historical core and are generally accessible only to insiders. In this context, the definition of expanded archives was born, both from the point of view of content, where more and more disciplines interact within the same archive and from the point of view of different practices and fields that are applied during the design of an archive to expand the heritage to the community. The research proposes reflecting on the technology applied to the fashion archive, which allows it to correct its elitist connotation through direct and facilitated navigation of contents (MacNeil & Eastwood, 2017).