New Google project digitizes world’s top fashion archives

NEW YORK Anyone who has waited in line to get into a fashion exhibit at a top museum knows how popular they’ve become — and how fashion is increasingly seen as a form of artistic expression.

Google Inc. is acknowledging this reality by expanding its Google Art Project — launched in 2011 to link users with art collections around the world, online — to include fashion.

The new initiative, We Wear Culture, uses Google’s technology to connect fashion lovers to collections at museums and other institutions, giving them the ability to not only view a garment, but to zoom in on the details, wander around an atelier or sit down with Metropolitan Museum of Art costume restorers.

The project partners with more than 180 cultural institutions, including the Met’s Costume Institute, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Japan’s Kyoto Costume Institute, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. It comprises more than 30,000 garments.

The site also offers specially curated exhibits. You can click your way to a curated photo exhibit on Tokyo Street Style, or an exploration of women’s gowns in the 18th century. You can search by designer or by their muse — examining, say, Marilyn Monroe’s love of Ferragamo stiletto heels.

At a recent preview demonstration, Amit Sood, director of the Google Cultural Institute and designer of the Google Art Project (now called Google Arts & Culture) said he wasn’t initially clued into the possibilities for fashion, because at the tech giant, “we all wear hoodies.”

But, he said, collaborating with an institution like the Met showed him that “art and fashion have a long history together.” The idea behind the new project, he said, is to tell the stories behind fashion.

Making a pitch to young users, the site also features YouTube personality Ingrid Nilsen in short videos, in which she explains the evolution of the hoodie, the choker, or colourful Japanese Sukajan jackets.