As of Friday December 13th a beta version of the Europeana Fashion Portal has been live.
Friday the 13th may be an unlucky day for some but for the Europeana Fashion (EF) team it commemorates over a year and a half of hard work. Europeana Fashion allows everyone to discover hundreds of thousands of fashion items from nineteen leading European fashion and costume institutions that are now available on a single website for the first time!
As it stands now, the portal still provides users with an extensive collection of photos to search through. Thousands of pairs of shoes, dresses, patterns, and sweaters, are available not only for viewing pleasure. Some of these have never been seen on the internet before. All come with detailed information written by experts from partnering institutions and a selection of those is available for fair reuse and sharing with content available under free access or held under a Creative Commons license. Video items provided by Sound & Vision and other partners will be available in due time.
Brown beaven and bordeuax calf-Rossimoda Shoe Museum CC BY-SA
Spending time purusing feels free and open, with no curation leading your opinion or taste. Users can view the beautiful cultural aspects of fashion pieces as individual statements of artistic creation. Take for example this dress from Dior provide by MUDE Museum. It is simply stunning even standing alone on a mannequin. Thousands of similar items are available on the portal and many more to come.
Those wishing for more focus can still view the Europeana Fashion Tumblr and see digital exhibitions curated by EF content providers. This month highlights some beautiful 18th century pieces from Centraal Museum in Utrecht. Users who enjoy the Tumblr can use the portal the explore deeper into collections.
Womenswear collection Spring/Summer. Catwalk Pictures. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
The current availability of the portal marks the beginning of stage two of the Europeana Fashion portal, which is being developed in three stages. In addition to ongoing development, Europeana Fashion is actively seeking contributions from the public on how to improve the site. An easy-to-use feedback form is available on the website. A second version of the portal will be launched in July 2014 and a final version in February 2015.
In the project, besides providing video materials, Sound & Vision coordinates fashion edit-a-thons happening all over Europe, Last month, we organised them in Sweden, Israel and Italy. Fashion lovers at home could participate in a month-long online challenge, which was won by Gilabrand. She receives a selection of fashion books from the partnering institutions. Places two and three go to Drkup(IMJ) and OR drohowa respectively.
With over a year to go and so much great work already accomplished the final version will be an impressive site.