Fashion as a social indicator and as a memory holder: valuation and preservation

Abstract

This article presents the garments used over the centuries as social indicators and bearers
of historical memory, which deserve to be studied and preserved. The research method
adopted was based on a relational perspective, with the reading of academic texts on topics
relevant to the research, relating them critically, after analyzing the contexts in which they
were produced, which provided us with a solid theoretical basis for reflection. The article clarifies
that clothing is able to reveal the way social groups behaved, how gender demarcations
were established and criteria for distinguishing economic groups. It is in this process of distinction
that clothing becomes fashionable, when elites began to use a certain mode of dress
as an indicator of wealth, incorporated by all members of the same restricted layer. The article
also emphasizes the importance of preventive conservation of this material heritage, so full of immaterialities. Clothing should be understood as guardians of memory, and, as such, should
be incorporated into the collections of museums. The article concludes that much more than
just “rags”, in the museal environment, fashion and clothing can be studied as document objects
by researchers, as well as providing visitors with the unique experience of imagining
clothes in their original contexts as carrying life and not as pieces emptied of meaning.