Exhibiting fashion on the heritage site: the interrelation between body, heritage space, and fashionable clothing

Abstract

The article examines a fashion exhibition at a heritage museum on a historic site in terms of fashion museology. Fashion museology, which has emerged from the growing phenomenon of exhibiting fashion in museums, advocates the visual representation and holistic atmosphere of the curatorial space that determines the on-site audience experience. This article focuses on how the interrelation between fashionable clothing, the bodies of the audience, and the heritage space constructs a hybrid space in which bodily movement articulates the displayed clothing. We consider the heritage space to be a performative event and explore how heritage museums can harness and make practical use of the affective interrelationship within the designed museum space in terms of the quality of the fashion exhibition experience. Museum audiences are situated in and moved around by the curated spatial environment, which is a space with cultural residuals and historical inheritance, where the bodily encounter with the displayed clothing occurs. The investigation of this interaction via case studies sheds light on the overlooked haptic experience and spatial storytelling in fashion exhibitions. The site-specific interaction at the heritage space mediates the body in multiple ways. Such curated bodily movement acts as a narration that imbues the clothing on display with meanings.