Rare fashion shows now available for streaming on the Bloomsbury Fashion Central

YNAP, the world’s leading online luxury fashion retailer, and Bloomsbury, the dynamic digital hub for interdisciplinary teaching and research in fashion and dress partner to bring Fashion Video Archive to Educational Market. The resource will be made available for streaming on the multi-award-winning Bloomsbury Fashion Central platform in 2019.

YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP (YNAP) and Bloomsbury announced a partnership to make rare fashion show footage pre-dating the rise of digital formats available to the educational market for the first time. The YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP Runway Archive Collection offers an unrivalled window onto fashion history between 1979 and 2003. YNAP has been digitizing and adding descriptors since that time to make the extraordinary content fully discoverable, while also working closely with key fashion institutions to support student learning.

Showcasing hundreds of hours of footage from the world’s most influential designers, 3,000 videos trace fashion history over two of its most transformational decades and chronicle the development of the runway from showcase to spectacle.

“We’re thrilled to be making this priceless resource available to the educational market exclusively through Bloomsbury. The period covered by the archive saw the disruptive impact of innovative designers such as the Antwerp Six, Rei Kawakubo and Hussein Chalayan; it spans more than two decades of London, Paris, New York and Milan runway shows and includes absolutely priceless footage, such as Alexander McQueen’s 1992 Jack the Ripper graduate show, Jean Paul Gaultier’s controversial ‘Rabbi Chic’ show, extraordinary Westwood and rare Galliano, as well as the radical Belgian Martin Margiela. It is an absolute treasure trove for fashion students and researchers as well as anyone interested in broader cultural and aesthetic trends of the period,” said Kathryn Earle, Managing Director of Bloomsbury Digital Resources.

“It’s a miracle that this footage has survived. Alongside a rapidly growing suite of products that contribute to Bloomsbury’s digital strategy, this archive will be an absolute jewel in our fashion offering.” added Kathryn Earle.

The footage will be accompanied by hundreds of exclusive, scholarly articles providing essential context. Shedding light on key collections, the evolution of trends, colours, individual designers’ work, the performance art of staging a runway show, and the rise of the supermodel, content will be specially curated by world-renowned fashion historian and Director of the Museum at FIT in New York, Dr Valerie Steele.

” We feel Bloomsbury is the perfect partner to bring this priceless content to new generations of students and researchers. We have always known the value of the archive to the educational community and are pleased to have found the ideal partner to deliver it. As pioneers at the forefront of fashion, this historic archive provides a great link to the future and we are excited to share this unique footage with the fashion students and academics globally,” said Tara Tierney, Digital Collections Curator at YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP.