Clothing, accessories and styles tell stories of identity. This section looks at how garments are used and what they are made from, beyond trends, approaching fashion as a social practice.
Readings to help you find your bearings.
A preserved garment reveals materials, techniques and traces of use, but it cannot tell us how an entire society dressed. Photographs, records and conservation practices place it in context—and help show which voices a collection leaves out.
Open storyFrom denim and velour tracksuits to music scenes and online shopping: a look at the diverse styles of the 2000s and the images that helped circulate them.
Open storyBeyond aesthetics, garments preserved in museums and archives function as documents recording social practices. This analysis examines how academic and cultural institutions reinterpret fashion as material culture, distinguishing everyday use from advertising narratives.
Open storyPhotographs, magazines and preserved garments make it possible to study fashion as a social practice without assuming that everyone wore the same things.
This section investigates clothing. Design and Music connect its languages and scenes without replacing the history of the garments themselves.
Three perspectives on the archive.
Garments in everyday settings.
A Garment Does Not Speak Alone: How Fashion Archives Turn Clothing into History When Clothing Becomes a Document in Fashion MuseumsAccessories and groups.
2000s Fashion: How Clothes and Trends Circulated 2000s Fashion: Garments, Scenes and Trends in CirculationMaking and circulation.
The Fabric of Memory: Clothing as a Social Archive Textile archives as witnesses to 1970s identityHeisei retro brings together objects and practices from Japan between 1989 and 2019, but it belongs not only to those who lived through the era. Tamagotchi, stickers, purikura, anime and music show how a reissue can revive not just a design, but ways of playing, making and sharing.
Read articleThe Spanish peineta was introduced in Buenos Aires around 1815 and became a precursor to the Río de la Plata peinetón.
Read articleThe documented period of use of the peinetón, a monumental hair ornament, among women in Buenos Aires begins, extending until 1837.
Read articleFrom 1824, interest in larger, more elaborate models began to grow, a development that led to the peinetón.
Read articleSources place the rise of the peinetón, a large-sized hairpin, between 1829-1830 and 1836-1837 in the fashion of the porteños.
Read articleThe peinetón reached its peak between 1830 and 1837 as a striking accessory in women’s fashion in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
Read articleHeisei retro brings together objects and practices from Japan between 1989 and 2019, but it belongs not only to those who lived through the era. Tamagotchi, stickers, purikura, anime and music show how a reissue can revive not just a design, but ways of playing, making and sharing.
In Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the peinetón turned an ornamental comb into a sign of fashion, status and belonging. Its manufacture, imagery and controversies reveal how dress made women visible—and brought their presence in the streets into question—in the 1820s and 1830s.
Low-rise jeans and fitted clothes sum up some enduring images of the 2000s, but not a decade with a single uniform. Denim, music subcultures, celebrities and online retail show how varied styles coexisted and circulated ever more quickly.
From Buenos Aires to Montevideo, the oversized ornamental comb was more than an accessory. Its manufacture, uses and controversies reveal tensions over class, gender, politics and women’s presence in public space.
From low-rise jeans to boho and skinny styles, 2000s fashion brought together distinct aesthetics. Celebrity photography, television and early forms of online shopping made certain garments more visible and sped up their passage from image to consumption.
Jeans, celebrity culture, retail and the spread of the internet help explain how styles circulated in the 2000s. But runway and press images alone cannot show who wore each garment, or how often.
In Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the peinetón turned an ornamental comb into an object of fashion, status and controversy. Images and written accounts offer ways to explore who made and wore them, and how their scale shaped public life.
With her 2008 debut, Lady Gaga made music, theatricality and public image parts of a single proposition. The album turned fame—its allure and its emptiness—into both subject and form, reaching an audience in a decade of accelerating digital circulation.
From denim and velour tracksuits to music scenes and online shopping: a look at the diverse styles of the 2000s and the images that helped circulate them.
From low-rise jeans and boho style to silhouettes linked with indie music and hip-hop, 2000s fashion brought together varied trends. The internet, e-commerce and designer collaborations with mass retailers accelerated their circulation, though runway and celebrity images alone cannot represent how everyone dressed.
In Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the oversized ornamental comb fashionable in the 1820s and 1830s was more than a striking accessory: images and accounts connect it to social distinction, skilled labor and debates over women’s presence in the street.
A preserved garment reveals materials, techniques and traces of use, but it cannot tell us how an entire society dressed. Photographs, records and conservation practices place it in context—and help show which voices a collection leaves out.
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