HISTORICAL
ARCHIVE
The Gianfranco Ferré Archive was established in 2007 upon initiative of the Ferré family with the aim of preserving and safeguarding Gianfranco Ferré’s creative, cultural, and design legacy, as a testament to his work and his enduring contribution to the history of fashion and design.
In 2014, the Ferré Archive was recognised as heritage of “particularly important historical interest” by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Lombardy Archival and Bibliographic Superintendency. It preserves the entire production of the Gianfranco Ferré company, from its founding in 1978 through June 2007, the year of the designer’s passing, as well as biographical and personal documents dating back to 1944, the year of his birth.
The archive comprises a wide variety of materials, both physical and born-digital, organised into six thematic sections. The garments and accessories archive includes approximately 4.250 items – garments, accessories, and bijoux – spanning the various Ferré lines and collections. The documentation archive encompasses around 24.000 artefacts, including drawings of different kinds – sketches, technical drawings, and fashion show drawings – essential to reconstructing the entire creative process behind each collection, along with materials related to the brand’s communication, such as invitations, catalogues, lookbooks, notes, and Gianfranco Ferré’s autograph writings.
The photographic archive preserves approximately 46.000 images, including runway photographs, advertising campaigns, and moments from the designer’s private and professional life. This is complemented by a substantial video library archive of about 3.000 items, featuring fashion show footage and a series of recorded interviews with the designer, contributing to the preservation of the Archive’s oral memory. The magazine library consists of approximately 1.650 bound volumes of fashion and lifestyle magazines from Ferré’s personal collection and includes the brand’s press review from the 1970s onward. Finally, a collection of approximately 120 art and design objects from the designer’s private collection completes the material holdings of the Research Center. Most of these materials have been digitised over the years – initially by the Foundation and later by the Research Center – resulting in a digital archive of approximately 250.000 archival materials.
The uniqueness of the archive lies in its rich semantic plurality and the high degree of interrelation among the preserved materials. This interconnected body of resources constitutes a fundamental asset for understanding the historical, social, and cultural dimensions of the fashion system as a whole. Each element documents, on the one hand, a specific phase of a broader creative and production process that led to the realisation of Gianfranco Ferré’s women’s and men’s Ready-to-wear collections, Haute Couture, and secondary lines; on the other hand, it reflects a strongly defined authorial vision, directly conveying the designer’s creative identity through personal and private documents and materials.