Call for Papers: Opening up the Fashion Archive

Research Symposium: Opening up the Fashion Archive

Hosted by UTS Gallery & Art Collection and 
UTS Fashion & Textiles
11–12 March 2026
UTS

Held in conjunction with the exhibition No place for Mannequins: Remaking the Fashion Archive, UTS Gallery, 12 February – 24 April 2026.

Opening up the Fashion Archive is a two-day research symposium convened alongside the exhibition No place for Mannequins: Remaking the fashion archive, UTS Gallery, Gadigal Nura/Sydney (12 February – 24 April 2026), curated by Todd Robinson (UTS) and Ricarda Bigolin (RMIT). The exhibition surveys the work of international and local practitioners exploring the shifting form and status of the contemporary fashion archive.

Critical scholarship on archives has shifted away from framing archives as neutral and passive repositories of records, documents, and artefacts, conceiving them instead as ideological and contested sites of knowledge production. In the critical fields of race and queer studies, feminist and decolonial approaches to the archive, the emphasis is on how archives are inherently political, governing what is remembered while also assigning value to forms of labour, knowledge, identity, and practice. As Jacques Derrida noted in his influential work on archives, “There is no political power without control of the archive, if not memory. Effective democratization can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation.”¹ In other words, the archive is a source of power—of inclusion and exclusion—and opening up the archive is contingent on who can access, shape, and interpret it.

These questions are also crucial to contemporary fashion practice and scholarship, where the fashion archive remains a significant source of authority. The collection and preservation of garments and accessories determine what is remembered, shaping the knowledge systems and cultural narratives through which fashion is understood. In recent years, however, critical currents within fashion studies, the humanities, and social sciences addressing equity, ecological and cultural responsibility have challenged many of fashion’s dominant narratives and modes of knowledge, particularly those grounded in Western, colonial, and environmentally damaging models of production, consumption, and representation.

At the same time, fashion as a global phenomenon has undergone a paradigmatic digital transformation. This has reshaped how fashion is produced, represented, circulated and archived. While museums and heritage fashion brands have embraced digitisation as a means of improving access and efficiency, digital platforms and networks have facilitated the emergence of archival fashion practices and markets that valorise historical fashion—from rare pieces and celebrated designers to fashion identities and events—positioning them as both cultural and economic assets. At the same time specialist online platforms, resale sites, and social media communities now function as distributed, participatory archival networks, enabling collectors, enthusiasts, and practitioners to document, share, and interpret fashion materials beyond traditional institutional frameworks.

This proliferation of archival material online is reflected in scholarly as well as professional interest in objects beyond clothing itself. Researchers increasingly examine vintage magazines, archival imagery of fashion shows, pamphlets, and other ephemeral artefacts as critical sources that illuminate the histories, aesthetics, and sociality of fashion. This is also evident in the exhibition No place for Mannequins: Remaking the fashion archive, where critical practices in and around fashion approach the archive not as a static repository but as a dynamic, contested, and transformative field of materials and practice. In this wider context, fashion archives are no longer confined to physical collections nor subject solely to institutional authority; rather, they exist as participatory, fluid, open spaces and materials across digital, social, and material networks, producing new modes of knowledge and engagement.

Given the complex and evolving nature of contemporary archives, the symposium Opening up the Fashion Archive considers the archive as a dynamic, contested, and relational field. It aims to explore how scholars, curators, practitioners, archivists, and researchers are working with material, digital, and social forms of archival engagement—actively remaking, rethinking, and reimagining archives and archival practice. By doing so, the symposium seeks to illuminate how archives function not only as repositories of memory but also as sites of critical intervention, knowledge production, and creative experimentation. 

Endnotes:
1. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995): 4, note 1.