In June of last year, 5Dculture presented the Fashion Beneath the Skin exhibition, featuring digitized garments from the archives of the Centraal Museum Utrecht (CMU), Kunstmuseum Den Haag, and the Zaans Museum, and supplementary material from the archive of the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision (NISV). Visitors had the opportunity to immerse themselves in a virtual social VR exhibition and experience digitized renditions of rare or seldom-exhibited garments.



Upon entering the vibrant building of NISV, visitors were guided by the technical team into the installation. Equipped with VR glasses, remote controllers, and a brief tutorial, attendees learned how to navigate through the three virtual spaces of the exhibition. The first room provided visitors with the chance to meet fellow attendees in the virtual environment.

The social VR system facilitated a shared experience, allowing participants to see and interact with one another in real time. This was made possible through a unique camera setup developed by the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), which captured and encoded the visitors' images and displayed them within the virtual world. Social VR utilises a volumetric video setup based on the VR2Gather platform, an open-source environment. The participants use HMD and are captured by multiple RGB-D cameras. The system generates highly realistic 3D representations of them in real-time, allowing their presence to be integrated into the virtual world. Both with the ability to see themselves and each other as well as to hear and communicate with one another.

Following an initial familiarization in the first room, visitors proceeded to the second and third rooms, where historical garments were presented in virtual reality. The immersive nature of the virtual world allowed for the simultaneous exhibition of multimedia content, providing an interactive approach to showcasing the evolution of body image. Archival imagery from NISV offered insight into the lives of women who wore the exhibited garments. Together with a fellow virtual  visitor, attendees learned about the history of each piece, which could be viewed in intricate detail—scaled to any size. Although the original garments are often delicate, fragile, and occasionally hazardous due to arsenic used in the clothing, limiting their public display, the digital versions allowed for an unprecedented close-up view.

The digital garments exhibited were from CMU, Kunstmuseum The Hague, and Zaans Museum. These were supplemented with archival material from the collections of NISV and the American Library of Congress. The virtual environment also incorporates historical wallpaper designs from the Oud Amelisweerd estate. The five 3D digitised garments have been published also to Europeana via the EFHA aggregator.

The garments digitised for the exhibition are shown below:


The final room of the exhibition featured an artistic presentation in the form of a game, where visitors applied the knowledge gained in the earlier rooms to access the exhibition's central message: the history of fashion and the evolution from garments that determine the silhouette to those that adapt to the contours of the body.

The technology offers several benefits that enhance sustainability of heritage and accessibility to heritage collections. The showcased pieces highlight the potential of innovative approaches to accessibility for heritage materials while emphasising the social dimension of exhibitions. Social VR is poised to become a key method for creating accessible, collaborative virtual exhibitions, sustainable collaboration means, transforming how heritage is experienced and shared.

Firstly, the selected materials for the exhibition include fragile pieces that are rarely displayed due to their delicate nature. Digitisation allows these items to be viewed up close, providing access to heritage material that would otherwise remain out of reach for most visitors.

Secondly, the virtual exhibition represents an innovation that fosters greater collaboration among museums. Since digitised materials do not require physical transportation, the risk of damage to fragile items is significantly reduced. This approach also facilitates the creation of exhibitions featuring content from multiple institutions, enabling collaborative projects that are safer for the artefacts, more accessible to a global audience through social VR technology and allowing new experiences that put these items and collections in a new context. Also in this case, the 3D models of the fashion garments have been optimised for reuse in the VR environment.

During the presentation of the social VR installation, the project’s team also invited a wide range of experts in tech research, VR innovation, media, and (fashion) heritage. These experts were given the opportunity to visit the installation, provide feedback on the experience, and participate in a knowledge-sharing event on the 28th of June 2024. The knowledge-sharing event served as a platform to present the installation and project alongside other initiatives working in similar fields. This event not only marked the conclusion of the installation but also provided an opportunity to share insights and lessons learned from the project. 

In this initial version of the exhibition, participants explored the virtual environment together, within the same physical space. However, the long-term vision is to create a virtual exhibition that allows individuals to meet remotely, from different museums and countries, and share a virtual experience that crosses borders.