Kobe Fashion Museum

Located on the maritime city of Rokko Island, the museum is the hub of the fashion city of Kobe, and focuses on fashion, food, clothing, and housing.

The exterior of the museum has a novel design reminiscent of a UFO. The interior consists of four levels, with a total floor space of 17,000m2, making it a large-scale facility.

The museum exhibits costumes and textiles from the past, present, and future through themes such as clothing construction, color, materials, clothing history, and techniques. Exhibits offer unique perspectives on fashion.

Special exhibitions showcase a wide variety of artworks, while the collections exhibit items from the history of clothing from the Rococo period to the present day (although collection exhibitions may not be held on certain occasions).

The museum also has a library containing approximately 40,000 books, which is especially recommended. The library houses mainly fashion-related books, and is well-stocked with magazines and art books from around the world.

In addition, the museum offers clothing courses in the seven categories of materials, color, decoration, history, designers, society, and media, with the aim of developing human resources for the fashion industry.

The museum facilities are as follows

1F: Museum - venue for permanent and special exhibitions (adjacent to the Kobe Museum of Art)
3F: Library - containing approximately 28,000 books on art fashion and interior design, film clips of classic movies, fabric swatches, and other actual materials.
4F: Resource Center - a reference library
5F: Orbis Hall - venue for fashion shows and events
These facilities are owned by the City of Kobe.

The Kobe Fashion Museum has the following collections in its library and other facilities.

Books on clothing from the 19th and early 20th centuries
Back issues of fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, LIFE, etc.
21 film films by Strobe-Huillet
The Junko Ouchi Collection (approximately 46,000 slides of top designers since the 1970s, etc.)
Approximately 4,800 environmental and documentary films
Approximately 2,400 fashion show films from Paris, Milan, London, and Tokyo
Approximately 30,000 French and Italian fabric swatches from the 19th and early 20th centuries (copyright free)
Restored works created in cooperation with the Department of Clothing Science at Osaka Shoin Women’s University are also on display.