NEW YORK — Anyone who has waited on a long, snaking line to get into a fashion exhibit at a top museum knows just how popular they’ve become — and more broadly, how fashion is increasingly seen as a form of artistic and cultural expression.
Google Inc. is acknowledging this reality by expanding its Google Art Project — launched in 2011 to link users with art collections around the world, online — to include fashion.
The new initiative , “We Wear Culture,” which launched Thursday, uses Google’s technology to connect fashion lovers to collections and exhibits at museums and other institutions, giving them the ability to not only view a garment, but to zoom in on the hem of a dress, examine a sleeve or a bit of embroidery on a gown up close, wander around an atelier, or sit down with Metropolitan Museum of Art costume restorers.
The project partners with more 180 cultural institutions, including the Met’s Costume Institute, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Japan’s Kyoto Costume Institute, and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. It comprises over 30,000 garments.
