02.06.2017
On 31 May 2017, the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Centre was the venue for a plenary session of the 20th International Theoretical and Practical Conference “Fashion and Design: Historical Experience – New Technologies”.
The conference was held in conjunction with the Russian Ethnographic Museum and Saint Petersburg State University of Industrial Technologies and Design. Members of staff from many St Petersburg museums participated in the sessions.
This year the topic for discussion was the use of check and stripe patterns in clothing from various countries and eras, from deep antiquity to the early 20th century. The intensive programme for the conference included talks by specialists devoted to outstanding complexes of clothing in museum collections, and also the evolution of the most ancient ornamental motifs of checks and stripes in textiles in the context of the development of artistic styles.
Conference-goers were shown 18th- and 19th-century costume complexes from the stocks of the State Hermitage’s Department of the History of Russian Culture that were connected with the theme of the conference. During a tour of the open storage they viewed some unique items – outfits work by Russian empresses that are kept in the Hermitage.