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. 

The venue of EFHA2026 International Conference “In Situ / On Site” is indeed 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.

Across four panels spread over the two days of conference – 23rd and 24th November – 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 first panel, “Districts, Craft, and the Formation of Production Geographies” spans from the analysis of the role of industrial epicenters in Italian prêt-à-porter to the singular history of a textile-based souvenir factory, ending with reflections on the evolving and complex relationship between industrial sites and universities, factory lines and design practices.

“Manufacturing Places and Archives” is the title of the second panel, which focuses on the innumerable forms textile manufacturing adopts to enter or shape other places – such as textile hubs, catwalks or museums – as well as the role of textile sample books as both primary sources and ghostly presences within collections.

The third panel, “Exhibiting and Re-activating Industrial Heritage”, deals with the broad theme of heritage activation. The speakers touch upon current and past instances of curating, researching and actively catalyzing industrial heritage, bringing examples from Germany, Portugal, Italy, Poland and the UK.

From stories of women’s labour to accounts of the rise and fall of textile cities, the fourth and final panel, “Oral History, Labour, and Post-Industrial Memory”, closes the conference by bringing to the forefront the communities, subjectivities and collective memories that embodied and (were) shaped (by) these industrial spaces.

Register to the Conference here.

EFHA2026 International Conference “In Situ / On Site”
Central Museum of Textiles / Centralne Muzeum Włókiennictwa, Piotrkowska 282, 93-034 Łódź, Poland
Nov. 23 – 24, 2026