Basic fashion information resources: bibliographic sources, memory institutions, and content objects

Abstract

The development of bibliographic references and information resources makes perfect sense in view of the relevance acquired by postgraduate studies and the strengthening of professional activities in the fashion sector. The sources provide the basis for the concepts of academic work and give precision and meaning to the tasks, especially when they are of scientific, productive or commercial communication. The repertoire has on the one hand, bibliographic attributes, as the section dedicated to fashion bibliographies reveals. This is followed by specialised information resources, in particular encyclopaedias, manuals and treatises on the history of fashion, as well as dictionaries and works on terminology. The bibliographic character is still evident in the lists of scientific journals that study fashion, although they are now presented as technical documentation resources, without forgetting the general fashion and beauty journals. Archives and libraries, as well as documentation centres and museums, are identified and described as fashion memory institutions. Finally, digital information sources include fashion databases and platforms, especially websites and blogs. Each of the sources covered incorporates traces of lives and contexts that dialogue with the aesthetic, the political and the social. Ultimately, systematically organising these sources strengthens the rigour of investigations and broadens the scope for a critical understanding of fashion. This consolidates fashion's status as an interdisciplinary and dynamic subject.