Representação de figurinos: a Moda como informação

Abstract

This research seeks to contribute to the development of an adequate approach to the Organization and Documentary Representation of costumes. It seeks to analyze the bibliographic records of costumes in museums, identifying the descriptive elements present; compare the descriptive elements of costume records with normative documents; identify the essential elements to represent a costume. The exploratory research has the purpose of formulating hypotheses in order to enable the researcher a more objective approach to the research problem. A search was carried out for the term used, by means of the area's controlled vocabularies. The terms were submitted in national and international databases. Four institutions that provide online access to bibliographic records and their descriptive elements were selected: Victoria & Albert Museum (England), Museu Nacional do Traje (Portugal), FIT Museum (USA) and Kyoto Costume Institute (Japan). As for the data analysis, an investigation of the commonly adopted documents that can best meet the Organization and Representation of Knowledge. We chose to use the normative documents: International Cataloguing Principle (ICP), IFLA-LRM model, ISBD and ICOM Costumes. Then, we adopted 3 representative pieces for Fashion: Bloomer pants, mourning dress and wedding dress. So that, these choices reflected similar representations, making possible the mutual comparison. A consolidation of the bibliographic records analysis was made and, based on the exposed descriptive elements, a costume representation proposal was established based on the normative documents. As a result, it was observed that the records, despite treating the same piece, have descriptive elements that differ from each other. It was noted that each institution represents the objects with some implicit elements, meaning that there is no defined delimiting field. However, the use of visual elements is essential for a better understanding of the bibliographic record. We conclude, then, that interoperability among information systems is important, respecting the characteristics of each institution and its users. And, that it is necessary to study the norms, the theory and the social context in order to determine the essential elements for the representation of costumes.