Fashion Time: Enacting Fashion as Cultural Heritage and as an Industry at the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Oslo

Abstract

During the first half of the twentieth century the Western fashion industry expanded, new fashion houses were created and the dissemination and distribution of fashion clothing was institutionalized through fashion shows, retail, window displays and fashion photography. At the same time, fashionable dress was established as a field of knowledge within European and Scandinavian museums. This article focuses on the process of bringing fashionable dress into the museum field. It also looks at the connections between the museum and the fashion industry. It investigates what kind of work fashionable clothes were supposed to do in the museum. What was the link to the fashion industry and how did that play out? Since both museums and fashion in general are basically connected to notions of time, this article investigates how the concepts of a future and a past were articulated and staged at one particular dress event at the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Oslo in 1933: What kind of role did history and time play in this event? By discussing these questions, the article also explores what kind of knowledge project fashion history was part of.