Archives discussion and feedback

[lowrey]

for clarity, the discussion on the Garment Archives has been moved to a separate thread from the rules and instructions

[Faust]

Dear SZers,

Welcome to The Garment Archives Project. As many of you know, there is often a dearth of clear images of the garments out there, especially from those designers who operated in the pre-Internet era. I would like us to change this. Many of us have wonderful garments in our closets, many of them rare. I want us to make a collective effort to share images of them, as well as information pertaining to their provenance. This project will allow us to create something that is unprecedented on the Internet and hitherto has been mostly reserved or outsourced to fashion departments of museums – a comprehensive garment archive. I ask all of you to contribute in this collective effort, and I encourage you to go far and wide in terms of designers you want to see here. Let’s make this something we can be proud of!

Forum Structure and Posting Guidelines:

• Each designer will have his/her own thread. The threads will have to be created by one of the moderators, because of the specific nature of the posts. If you don’t see a specific designer thread, please PM me, lowrey, or Avantster, and we will add it. Anyone can create individual posts.
• The nature of the posts is structured. Please take care to answer as many questions the posting form asks you – such as sex, season/year, fabric composition, country of manufacture, etc.
• Be detailed in your description.
• In order to prevent any loss of images, I have turned on attachments – you can now attach photos to your posts.
• Please make an effort to take clear pictures, and no more than 4 photos per garment. Front and back are mandatory, and maybe 1 or 2 detail shots, if you feel they are important.
• Please do not post any comments. This forum is for information/archival purposes only.

[MetroBulotDodo]

AHHHHHHH!

[clap] [clap] [clap] [clap]

Thank you so much for taking my suggestion seriously and for taking the necessary time to organize the SZ archives Faust and others...this is going to be epic.

I think, given the efforts of the collective, we can make this a resource that will draw more quality participants to SZ. More importantly, it will be fantastic to see and study designs I've only had "access" to when curators have chosen to grace us with exhibits, seemingly every decade or so.

Further, I won't even have to travel to Japan to see the exhibits (though I would not complain if I were forced to.)

Thanks again. I'm ready to jump out of my office chair just thinking about what this will become.

MBD

[Faust]

For some reason I am having trouble turning on the attachments. Standby.

[christianef]

re: Forum Structure and Posting Guidelines
aside from a clear picture are there rules for how the garment should be shot - alone on a hanger, as more of a fit picture with a human wearing the garment, CHRIS style, either or...?

[thehouseofdis]

Nice! Thanks for this. I'll post some things after I relocate.

[MetroBulotDodo]

re: forum net-iquette,

I wanted to clarify with Faust and others...as I thought more about the forum this evening, it occurred to me that I would find it easier to part with things were I able to archive my more "important" garments on an external server before passing them on. In fact, I would find it deeply comforting (god, I feel pathetic) if I could look up my garments any time after selling.

I don't have any intentions to sell most of what I will archive, but I wanted to make sure that archiving, then selling at some point in what could be the near-future would not be an egregious broach of forum etiquette.

But let's be clear about this: that is not to say that I would want, in any instance, for this to become a personal shopping thread for Russian/Chinese/fill-in-the-blanks bazillionaires.

In any case, should we bother to make a policy regarding quick archive-sells so that it does not become a WTS clusterf•ck? I don't have a solution for this. At the very least, I hope that we are careful to use our discretion.

MBD/Miss Manners

[formateriam]

re: Forum Structure and Posting Guidelines
aside from a clear picture are there rules for how the garment should be shot - alone on a hanger, as more of a fit picture with a human wearing the garment, CHRIS style, either or...?

I understand the direction you're going with this however specifying too many restrictions will limit the amount of contributions submitted. Since a majority of the clothing by these designers are very dark and often matte, the details of the type of material or how it has been processed can easily be lost unless the submitter knows a thing or two about product or fashion photography. I do think that "clear" needs to be elaborated on.

[lowrey]

imo clearly poor or low quality images shouldn't be posted altogether. We will revise the rules a bit once this is up and running.

re: forum net-iquette,

I wanted to clarify with Faust and others...as I thought more about the forum this evening, it occurred to me that I would find it easier to part with things were I able to archive my more "important" garments on an external server before passing them on. In fact, I would find it deeply comforting (god, I feel pathetic) if I could look up my garments any time after selling.

I don't have any intentions to sell most of what I will archive, but I wanted to make sure that archiving, then selling at some point in what could be the near-future would not be an egregious broach of forum etiquette.

But let's be clear about this: that is not to say that I would want, in any instance, for this to become a personal shopping thread for Russian/Chinese/fill-in-the-blanks bazillionaires.

In any case, should we bother to make a policy regarding quick archive-sells so that it does not become a WTS clusterf•ck? I don't have a solution for this. At the very least, I hope that we are careful to use our discretion.

MBD/Miss Manners

I barely got to the end of this post, but do you mean that we should prevent people from using the archives to offer to buy something?

[Faust]

I want photos not to be on a human body, but garments in themselves. This is about the garment, it's not another WAYWT. If you have a mannequin and think the garment will benefit from being on a dress form, you can use it. We want only clear/high quality photos please.

Lowrey: MBD means that she has stuff that she should sell, but is holding on to it for sentimental reasons, but once there will be a record of those garments, she will be able to let them go.

[MetroBulotDodo]

Sorry guys,

4 am email + natural tendencies + ESL = me

I am indeed saying what Faust has noted. However, there is a *genuine concern* embedded in my note. I think it should be emphasized that the archive should not be intended as "the most awesome classified forum in the world."

I don't think there is anyway to regulate this. Fine. Of course people buy and sell things in their collections to make room for more. That cannot be helped because most of us have to sell in order to buy.

The point? Let's all agree, however, not to abuse it as such.

[Faust]

All, please bear with us why we figure out the attachments situation.

[AKA*NYC]

mbd you're projecting. :)

it's pretty clear that this is an archive not a classifieds thread.

[ironman]

what a great idea; i look forward to participating in this!

Faust, since this is an archive, would it be acceptable to include images of items one previously owned?

edit: you guys are probably still fixing it, but from what i can see right now, i cannot see lowrey's images in the MA+ thread and Faust your image in the CDiem thread looks like this to me http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y15...faust_test.jpg

[magic]

can/are our images copyrighted? i am not sure if it sound necessary but its like a project at SZ to me and i just dont want mine/our hard works end up in other forum classified...

[MetroBulotDodo]

mbd you're projecting. :)

it's pretty clear that this is an archive not a classifieds thread.

: p

Yes, okay, fine! Admittedly, I'm slightly weird about people who think they can buy anything they see, even from archives. I've had people ask to buy things off my back...ugh (not to mention problematic for women....)

[lowrey]

Faust, since this is an archive, would it be acceptable to include images of items one previously owned?

edit: you guys are probably still fixing it, but from what i can see right now, i cannot see lowrey's images in the MA+ thread and Faust your image in the CDiem thread looks like this to me http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y15...faust_test.jpg

I don't see any problem with posting previously owned pieces if you have the photos and necessary info.

yes, thats a test and its still being worked on.

can/are our images copyrighted? i am not sure if it sound necessary but its like a project at SZ to me and i just dont want mine/our hard works end up in other forum classified...

this is a good idea, I'll talk with Faust about protecting the images

[Faust]

Ironman, of course!

Magic - the images are turned off for non-members. We cannot prevent them being lifted otherwise. What we could do, for those who have photoshop on their computers is to provide the SZ font, so you can do the watermarking yourself.

[magic]

Magic - the images are turned off for non-members. We cannot prevent them being lifted otherwise. What we could do, for those who have photoshop on their computers is to provide the SZ font, so you can do the watermarking yourself.

Okay, understandable. you got a PM!

[Chinorlz]

This is awesome.

Although it seems like we'd most prefer to have garment images only with details of the piece with it, would runway shows/studio images (Linea images and Maurizio's studio images come to mind) be acceptable?

I got a ton to unload on here :)

On top of that, I'm quite interested to see Runner/Crouka get involved. The images on that man's hard drive... I can only imagine.

In reference to MBD's posting above, I keep all of my old sales images in a giant folder and will slowly post the images to the appropriate threads on here.