PT
Colloquium “What’s Costume Got to Do with Terms? Terminology and Clothing Heritage in the Portuguese Language”
The international colloquium “What’s Costume Got to Do with Terms? Terminology and Clothing Heritage in the Portuguese Language” will take place on 7 and 8 April at NOVA FCSH, Auditorium 2, Tower A, bringing together researchers, specialists and professionals from the fields of fashion, museology, history and linguistics.
Clothing has been part of everyday human life since time immemorial. As a system of objects that accompany us and contribute to our identities, it has only relatively recently been collected and exhibited within museum contexts, notably since 1907, when the French Société de l’Histoire du Costume was founded and began assembling collections of historical dress, now housed at the Palais Galliera in Paris (Basse-Krueger 2018). Although interest in the history and cultures of clothing, as well as in the documentation of garment production, dates back much further (Rublack & Hayward, 2015)—with the early example of Cesare Vecellio and his De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo, published in Venice in 1590—the establishment of collections preceded the standardisation of specialised terminology. This standardisation enables inventory and classification processes, fostering knowledge, dissemination and innovation surrounding material garments, discourse, and the system of meanings of fashion that both reflect and shape the culture and ideology of societies.
In 1975, ICOM Costume – the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Costume, Fashion and Textiles – began developing a standardised vocabulary of fashion, consisting of basic terms for cataloguing, with the aim of creating a common terminology for museums worldwide (Buck 1981). Portuguese versions emerged later, first in Brazilian Portuguese through the Terminologia do Vestuário project, initiated in 2018 and completed in 2020, and subsequently in European Portuguese through the TERMVEST – Terminologia do Vestuário: European Portuguese Version project (NOVA CLUNL), completed in 2026, which prompted the organisation of this colloquium.
“What’s Costume Got to Do with Terms? Terminology and Clothing Heritage in the Portuguese Language” aims to contribute to the state of the art of research in Portuguese on clothing and its terminology by presenting the results of projects developed at NOVA FCSH (TERMVEST, VESTE, DRESS) and at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (including the Terminologia do Vestuário Extension Project and research carried out within the postgraduate programme in Visual Arts at the School of Fine Arts, under the supervision of Maria Cristina Volpi). It also seeks to foster the development of collaborative networks among participants in a multi- and transdisciplinary environment, while encouraging the creation of new projects and aligning research on the history, cultures and terminology of clothing in Portuguese with ongoing international debates.
Participation in the colloquium requires prior registration, available here.
ORGANISATION:
CLUNL – Research Center for Linguistics at NOVA University Lisbon