Historic dresses go digital in university project

Items from the Devonshire Dress Collection are being turned into a 3D exhibition

High-powered scanners are being used to create digital versions of thousands of garments from a historic dress collection.

The Devonshire Dress Collection, previously displayed in Totnes Fashion and Textiles Museum, recently moved to the Institute of Fashion and Textiles at Falmouth University.

The university, which has been researching the collection, said it had been turned into a 3D digital exhibition using the scans.

The research would help provide greater accessibility and educational opportunities, it said.

Julia Fox, former curator of the collection, said the dresses provided a window to the past

The university said the collection covered the past 250 years and was one of the largest of its type in the UK.

There are tens of thousands of objects and items of clothing in the collection, the earliest being from about 1650, although most date from the 18th Century to the present day.

Julia Fox, former curator of the dress collection, said: "You have all of that past to relate to when you're handling these things and you think 'what has this garment seen and what has it done?'."

Sian Pilley said the dresses were being "preserved for the future"

The university said it was using scanning equipment from Newquay-based company Logical Choice.

Sian Pilley, from Logical Choice, said the technology allowed them to discover repairs up close.

"When we zoomed in you could see this beautiful pan stitching," she said.

"In a way it's like future archaeology because [we are] preserving this for the future.

"As the items deteriorate, we have that information to really investigate how these garments were constructed - the fabrics they were using, the materials."

A digital exhibition of the collection was made using the scans

Lucy Stent, a game development lecturer at the university, said technology had allowed the collection to be turned into a 3D exhibition.

"It could be used for anything," she said.

"It could be turned into a game or it could be restoring the story behind the items.

"I'm a computing person so I've never paid that much attention to fashion but it has definitely opened my eyes."