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Events - 04.10.2010 - 00:00 

“Fashion, Power and Marketing”

From 11-23 October 2010 at the University of St.Gallen you can see the travelling exhibition “Fashion, Power & Marketing – propaganda activities of the Basel silk ribbon manufacturers at the start of the twentieth century”.

$alt

4 October 2010. The Swiss Economics Archive (SWA) in Basel conceived the exhibition to mark its one hundred year anniversary. It was important to the SWA on its one hundredth birthday to find some treasures from the archive boxes and to present them to a wide public.

Secret marketing campaign”
The existing collection of the “Ribbon propaganda committees” is the focus of the exhibition. It has been in the Swiss Economics Archives since 1933. The files give an insight into a marketing campaign that was to run secretly and that tried to subtly influence both the milliners and the public. Magnificent photographs, colourful pattern books and clothes from silk ribbon take the visitors to the exhibition back to the world of fashion in the early part of the twentieth century.

Textile centres Basel and St.Gallen
The archival records also tell of the once important silk ribbon industry. By the eighteenth century this had developed into the most important economic sector in the Basel region and from the city on the Rhine had established a world-renowned textile stronghold – similar to St.Gallen.

The SWA documents the economy and political economy of Switzerland. 35,000 dossiers on general business topics, companies, associations and individuals include the current publications by and about the economic protagonists of the time.

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