A Ugent BOF starting grants is funding research on this project, which examines the relationship between fashion and architecture in terms of their historical-theoretical underpinnings and on their interdependence in terms of exhibitions and displays. The chronology of this new research spans the rise of the department store in the nineteenth century to contemporary projects and designs.
The research questions include: how fashion and architecture were theorized together within the decorative arts in nineteenth-century texts; how fashion designers and architects have collaborated from the nineteenth century to the present day; how the design of fashion exhibitions and displays the way it frames the perception of the fashion object; how digital technology can be used to strengthen the relationship between the museum as an architectural site and the (fashion) exhibition object.