EFHA International Symposium 2026: “In Situ / On Site” Nov. 23 – until 24, 2026

The study of fashion heritage has long centred on the object. This year the EFHA conference turns to the site: the factories, workshops, districts, warehouses and landscapes where fashion and textiles were made, and where the material traces of that production still shape cultural, economic and urban life. Across four panels, speakers from across Europe consider production districts and craft, industrial archives and sample books, oral history and post-industrial memory, and the curating and repurposing of industrial spaces. The venue is part of the argument: the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź occupies the Ludwik Geyer's White Factory, a mill complex built between 1835 and 1886 in a city made by textiles, and holds one of the largest textile collections in Europe.

Programme

Monday, 23 November

10,00 - 10,30 Registration & Coffee

10,30 - 10,45 Welcome and Institutional Opening

10,45 - 11,15 Keynote speech (TBA)

Panel 1: Districts, Craft and the Formation of Production Geographies

11,15 - 11,30 Industrial Districts and the Rise of Italian Prêt-à-Porter.
Lucia Savi, Design Museum London

11,30 - 11,45 Behind the Souvenir. Pontelandolfo and the Hidden Geographies of Italian Textile Production
Andrea Chiara Bonanno, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”

11,45 - 12,00 Fashion Design as a Situated Practice: Pedagogical Dynamics in an Evolving Industrial Landscape
Rita Salvado, University of Beira Interior

12,00 - 12,15 A School Without a Factory: The Dispersed Geography of Textile Design in Łódź, 1945-1989
Adam Drozdowski, University of Łódź

12,15 - 12,35 Discussion

12,35 - 13,35 Lunch break

Panel 2: Manufacturing Places and Archives

13,35 - 13,50 Silk, Secrets, and Sovereignty: King Stanisław August's Textile Hubs
Julia Barbasiewicz, Royal Łazienki, Warsaw

13,50 - 14,05 Textiles on the Catwalk: the Legler Cotton Mill at the Florence Fashion Show, 1958-1963
Erica Grossi, Fondazione Legler / IUAV

14,05 - 14,20 Mulhouse: The Fashion for Manufactured Textiles at the Museum
Pascale Nachez with Bernard Durand, Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse

14,20 - 14,35 Textile Sample Books: Preserved but Forgotten?
Sanne Van Bellingen, ETWIE / Industriemuseum, Ghent

14,35 - 14,50 Refashioning Former Industrial Towns Thanks to Fabric Sample Books: the Silver Valley Case
Clementine Canu, Val d'Argent

14,50 - 15,10 Discussion

15,10 - 15,25 Coffee break

Panel 3: Exhibiting and Re-activating Industrial Heritage

15,25 - 15,40 Exhibiting the Invisible: Fashion, Industry and the Geographies of Production in Germany, 1918-1927
Marie Helbing, LWL Museum of Industrial Culture, Dortmund

15,40 - 15,55 Fashion and Modernity. VOGA and the 1º Salão de Outono da Elegância Feminina e Artes Decorativas
Anabela Becho, MUDE-Museu do Design

15,55 - 16,10 EPIC: Experience Prato Industrial Culture
Filippo Guarini, Museo del Tessuto, Prato

16,10 - 16,25 Fashion Storytelling as Industry Engagement: the Sekers Silk Mill Archive from Couture to Local Communities' Engagement
Anne Timson and Victoria de Lorenzo, Handpicked / V&A-RCA

16,25 - 16,40 Archiving the Living Site: From a Passive Investigation of Industrial Ruins to an Active Creation of Future Heritage
Aleksandra Jatczak-Repeć, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw

16,40 - 17,00 Discussion & Wrap up

17,00 Museum demonstration of historical looms

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Tuesday, 24 November

10,00 - 10,10 Welcome & Intro

Panel 4: Oral History, Labour and Post-Industrial Memory

10,10 - 10,25 Typical/Atypical: Łódź's Clothing Heritage in the Urban Cultures Collections
Tomasz Holak, Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, Łódź

10,25 - 10,40 The Phenomenon of the Greatest Polish Fashion Houses in an Industrial Working-Class City and a Communist Country
Marcin Różyc, Central Museum of Textiles, Łódź

10,40 - 10,55 Powering the Textile City: Oral History, Labour Memory and the Regeneration of EC-1
Michał Kędzierski, EC1 / University of Łódź

10,55 - 11,15 Coffee break

11,15 - 11,30 Threads that Remain: Saxony's Textile Landscape after Deindustrialisation
Sandra Cienkowski, Independent, Leipzig

11,30 - 11,45 Apron Stories: Women's Labour in the Linen Landscape of Tullylish
Jacqueline Toal, Dundalk IT, Lancaster

11,45 - 12,00 Fashioning Violence: How the Łódź Ghetto Became a Textile Production Hub for Nazi Germany
Karolina Sulej, Central Museum of Textiles, Łódź

12,00 - 12,30 Discussion

12,30 - 12,45 Closing remarks and farewell