Biography and Fashion Collections: Developing a dress-specific acquisition and cataloguing methodology using the Francis Golding Collections.

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How can analysis of the clothing collections of Francis Golding, held in the Museum of London (MOL) and London College of Fashion Archives (LCF), be used as a case study for creating a dress-specific acquisition and cataloguing methodology. The Golding collections engage with masculinity and gender studies, LGBTQ+ dress, as well as British design history, providing a unique opportunity to analyse how dress-based collections are acquired and catalogued. The proposed research will establish a methodology that enables the full biography of an object of dress to be documented upon acquisition, connected to the wider collection, and catalogued in a manner that creates new avenues of accessibility, including online portals. By gathering the experiences and needs of donors, collections specialists, and museum audiences, my research aims to create a standard operative framework which currently does not exist. This framework can then be implemented by individual curators and collections practitioners and adopted by museums and galleries holding dress-based collections. This will allow for deeper analysis of the interconnectivity between personal identity and object biography, and broader socio-cultural, fashion and design histories in museum collections. These new lines of accessibility to collections will encourage engagement with diverse communities; therefore enriching the provenance of objects. This methodology aims to open up collections and include the histories of groups and individuals who have been previously under or misrepresented in museums.