In the summer semester 2024, students worked with Dr Klara von Lindern in a seminar to produce their own fashion magazine using items from the STAK. The magazine is entitled Materia: Magazine of the Textile Everyday Culture Collection. Based on the objects in the collection and their biographies, the students wrote very different articles on the key themes of 'Clothing and Gendering' and 'Slow Fashion and Repair Practices'. We invite you to get to know the STAK and its objects from new perspectives - in the spirit of the magazine's subtitle: 'More than just fabric!

You can download the magazine as a PDF filehere.

All fake?! Image editing and fashion magazines

As part of the seminar, we looked at the question of what criticism is levelled at fashion magazines. We often came across the aspect of falsification of reality through edited photos. In order to take up the topic in a very practical way in our magazine, we decided to show our editorial photo here, once in the raw version and once in the edited version, as it also appears in the magazine:

The team behind Materia: Magazine of the Sammlung Textile Alltagskultur (not all present), edited version

© Sammlung Textile Alltagskultur/Klara von Lindern

The team behind Materia: Magazine of the Textile Everyday Culture Collection (not all present), unedited version

© Textile Everyday Culture Collection/Klara von Lindern

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In the winter semester 2024/25, students worked together with Dr Klara von Lindern in a project seminar to develop strategies for the (museum) communication of traditional costume. The seminar took place in co-operation with the Museum Bückeburg für Stadtgeschichte und Schaumburg-Lippische Landesgeschichte (Dr Anke Twachtmann-Schlichter / Nadine Werel M.A.) as part of the research project Frühe Schaumburger Tracht: Ein eigener Modekosmos, which was applied for jointly with the Institute of Material Culture and funded by Pro*Niedersachsen. The museum provided original objects for the seminar, which the students used to develop communication approaches and presentation concepts. As part of the research project, not only is the early Schaumburg costume, which is a unique feature of the museum and has so far been insufficiently catalogued and researched, being studied, but a special exhibition is also being created in which objects and research results are presented together. The aim of the student projects was to develop ideas for a potential inclusion in the special exhibition. However, due to the limited space available, not all concepts could be adopted. This led to the idea of a magazine to record all the concepts and show them to interested parties, at least on paper.

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In the seminar, the students looked at the objects from different perspectives. For example, they dealt with questions about transculturality (traditional costume can be described as a global phenomenon), about traditional costume as a concept that always combines affiliation and demarcation at the same time, and about traditional costume as a construct that is defined externally but also 'filled' and inspired from within. But it was also about questions based on the individual objects in their specific materiality, which have nothing to do with their categorisation as 'traditional costume': How does bead knitting actually work, where did the fabrics, yarns or beads come from and how long does it take to embroider a shawl? What traces of wear can be found on the object and what information do they provide about usage practices or the physicality of the wearer? What traces of handling and storage can be found up to the time of their musealisation, which we refer to as signs of damage - for example moth damage or light damage?

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Based on these questions, the students developed their mediation ideas, which are aimed at a broad audience and demonstrate the potential of museums as (extracurricular) places of learning and as places of cultural education. There are workshops for pupils that can be implemented in history or textiles lessons. There are presentation concepts in which comparisons with contemporary text and image sources are used to show that boundaries between 'fashion' as a changing phenomenon and 'costume' as a stable phenomenon are constructed and de facto untenable. There are concepts for digital mediation programmes that break down certain barriers and increase the potential target audience. However, all ideas have one thing in common: the approach of demonstrating the many connections between the early traditional costumes of Schaumburg and our everyday lives today, while at the same time sensitising us to the special features of these objects.

Have we aroused your curiosity? Then download our magazine here!

Photos: © Museum Bückeburg / Klara von Lindern

Tracht on Display - The magazine for download