Charlene is currently on sabbatical for the 2024-2025 academic year.
Follow her progress on multiple projects in the Fashion Archive, Fashion History Classes, as well as other adventures HERE
Follow her progress on multiple projects in the Fashion Archive, Fashion History Classes, as well as other adventures HERE
Fashion Archive focuses on teaching & inquiry based learning supporting both collection development, information, & cultural literacy acquisition. The School of Theatre at Penn State often has vintage costume pieces no longer stage-worthy &/ or more valuable as primary source research garments. Spring 2022, I assumed the role of Director of the School of Theatre Fashion Archives which taps my previous experience working on the College of Wooster's Digital Costume Collection. Check out the in-progress digital site HERE
Access to the garments have been limited to the School of Theatre or by appointment-only viewings due to space, time, & personnel. I am working with the Center for Virtual/ Material Studies at Penn State to give each of the 3000+ pieces unique accession numbers & metadata, photograph & research the extant garments, turning it into a digital collection using Omeka S. This will make these primary source garments useful to costume & fashion historians regardless of their location. The resource will provide 360 & still photography for exploration of construction techniques, fabric choice, trim & decorative details. A timeline of the project is listed below. Our first venture together involved FLAX: First Fiber of the Arts (HERE). CVMS & the Archive used a series of linen/ linen-like garments from the Fashion Archive as a beta test. Check it out HERE
Access to the garments have been limited to the School of Theatre or by appointment-only viewings due to space, time, & personnel. I am working with the Center for Virtual/ Material Studies at Penn State to give each of the 3000+ pieces unique accession numbers & metadata, photograph & research the extant garments, turning it into a digital collection using Omeka S. This will make these primary source garments useful to costume & fashion historians regardless of their location. The resource will provide 360 & still photography for exploration of construction techniques, fabric choice, trim & decorative details. A timeline of the project is listed below. Our first venture together involved FLAX: First Fiber of the Arts (HERE). CVMS & the Archive used a series of linen/ linen-like garments from the Fashion Archive as a beta test. Check it out HERE
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UPDATE: All hanging garments (1147 items) have been accessioned, photographed & uploaded to the online site. The information below will be updates Summer 2024 as time allows.
The slideshow illustrates the progression of this project starting in Spring 2022 through Summer 2022. The immediate goal is to implement a digital inventory with new, unique identification numbers while sorting & documenting the work that went before us. We have completed one room to date (07/01/2022). Each piece is given an accession number, metadata, tagged, entered into a digital catalogue, & then will be photographed for documentation. The team also established a photography setup for reference images in the in-take room, and has begun a beta test on the online archive HERE This project was begun with collaboration with the Center for Virtual/Material Studies at Penn State. The Center provided 3 student interns, optical microscopy, & coordinated still & 360 photography with Cody Goddard, multimedia specialist, to be used to pilot the collection using OMEKA S. It is part of the digital exhibition: FLAX: The First Fiber of the Arts & become its own Linen exhibition as well. The work continued in Fall 2022 by an undergraduate student. Megan Neely, through the generous funding of VRA Project Grant. To date all the hanging pieces (1300) in the collection are accessioned and reference photography has begun with approximately 500 pieces captured. This interdisciplinary project will provide open access to not just the Penn State community but also costume and fashion historians online anywhere in the world. In Fall 2022, a Faculty Research Grant from the College of Arts & Architecture was awarded to provide continued student work-study support, as well as research travel to multiple fashion collections in the mid-Atlantic & East coast. Watch for new developments. 
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Slideshow of Projects Happing in the Archive
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TIMELINE OF PROJECT
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**Links will navigate you away from this website in a new tab**
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School of Theatre
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CURRENT COLLABORATORS:
Center for Virtual/Material Studies at Penn State
Catherine Adams, Center for Virtual/ Material Studies, College of Art & Architecture, Penn State
Carolyn Lucarelli, Manager of Center for Virtual/ Material Studies, College of Art & Architecture, Penn State
Sarah Rich, Director of Center for Virtual/ Material Studies, Art History, Penn State
Awyn Rileybird, Textile Conservator, Winterthur/ Textile Museum @ George Washington University
William Minter, Senior Book Conservator in Preservation, Conservation & Digitization, Libraries, Penn State,
Center for Virtual/Material Studies at Penn State
Catherine Adams, Center for Virtual/ Material Studies, College of Art & Architecture, Penn State
Carolyn Lucarelli, Manager of Center for Virtual/ Material Studies, College of Art & Architecture, Penn State
Sarah Rich, Director of Center for Virtual/ Material Studies, Art History, Penn State
Awyn Rileybird, Textile Conservator, Winterthur/ Textile Museum @ George Washington University
William Minter, Senior Book Conservator in Preservation, Conservation & Digitization, Libraries, Penn State,
GRANTS/ AWARDS
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PRIMARY INVESTEGATOR (PI)
co-PI Lucarelli co-PI Laura Robinson |
AMOUNT
$9445 $3000 $1500 $261,359 |
YEAR
Awarded 2022 Awarded 2022 Awarded May 2022 Unfunded 2020 |
PRESS
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Penn Stater, The Magazine of the Penn State Alumni Association
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Spring 2025
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