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

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.