A Feel For Fashion: Sarah Scaturro

How essential is heritage and/or a distinctive identity in contributing to a brand’s success?

The establishment of a strong heritage DNA is essential to a brand’s long-term success. In the short term, a brand may achieve recognition through innovative products or by capturing the cultural zeitgeist. Longevity, however, depends on defining, cultivating, and continually refining a set of distinctive brand codes. Equally important is preserving the garments, objects, and ephemera that embody those codes, creating an archive that serves as both a record and a resource. Building heritage should be an ongoing process of looking both backward and forward, drawing on the brand’s historical essence while reinterpreting it in ways that feel fresh, relevant, and unmistakably iconic.

What is the most significant driver of change in fashion right now?

There is a widening attention gap across society, and fashion brands must compete relentlessly for visibility. In search of an advantage, they increasingly rely on analytics and algorithms, often with the goal of translating greater visibility into greater profit. In this environment, novelty becomes a key driver of growth. This poses a challenge for well-crafted, thoughtfully designed garments that may not immediately command attention but instead reward sustained looking. Such pieces also reward what I describe as close wearing: the time and experience required to truly understand how a garment functions, or fails to function, in one’s daily life. Through repeated wear, clothes reveal their qualities and meanings. They also become repositories of memory, accumulating personal associations and experiences that transform them from mere products into meaningful objects. In an attention economy that privileges the instantaneous, these slower forms of engagement are increasingly difficult to cultivate, yet they remain central to the enduring value of clothing.

There seems to be more overlap between fashion/entertainment and fashion/sports than ever. Thoughts? 

Sports have always been a source of entertainment, and the athletic body has often served as the fashionable ideal of its moment. One need only look to Classical Greece, where the celebration of musculature and the expressive qualities of draped fabric were central to sculpture and visual culture. Today, fashion’s increasingly close relationship with sports and entertainment reflects a similar fascination, but one amplified by the dynamics of contemporary media. These partnerships capture attention, inspire intense fandom, celebrate physical prowess, and, ultimately, drive profit. At the same time, they remind us that fashion exists at the intersection of culture and commerce. We can never forget that fashion is as much about generating revenue as it is about creating images, shaping aspirations, and projecting idealized visions of the world. The worlds of sport, entertainment, and fashion are now deeply intertwined because they excel at turning visibility into value, transforming admiration and desire into powerful economic forces.

How do you think fashion can spark and sustain desire with so much else going on in the world?

I think fashion (as a system, a product, and a form of aesthetic expression) will continue to spark desire, especially when it offers novelty, relevance, and perhaps even a sense of magic. The more pressing question is one of sustainability — not in the environmental sense, but in terms of attention: how long can a particular fashion moment, image, or product hold our interest? I am not convinced that it can do so for very long, nor is it necessarily meant to. Ephemerality is intrinsic to fashion. Its power lies in its ability to continually reinvent itself, to generate new desires, and to propose new ways of seeing and presenting oneself. Fashion thrives on change, and its most compelling moments are often fleeting.

What is the first thing you look for when a couture garment enters the archive?

As a curator, I seek to acquire garments that are unique, historically significant, and exemplary within their category. At the same time, my training as a conservator means that I am always attentive to materiality. I closely examine construction, fabrication, and technique to understand not only how an object was made, but also how the very processes of its making may create areas of weakness or vulnerability that could affect its long-term preservation, storage, or display. Having encountered countless exceptional objects throughout my career, I have developed an eye for quickly recognizing what makes a garment remarkable, whether through its design, craftsmanship, innovation, or cultural significance. Equally, I can often identify potential condition issues at a glance, assessing both the garment’s current state and the challenges it may pose for future stewardship. This dual perspective as both curator and conservator allows me to evaluate objects not only for their significance, but also for their material realities and long-term care needs.

Has the rise of vintage changed the way we look at couture, or merely the way we buy it —or in general the way we buy?

I think the rise of online shopping has undoubtedly accelerated the growth of the vintage market, increasing awareness of both the appeal and the significance of historic fashion and couture. Greater access to online platforms has exposed a wider audience to archival garments, fostering a deeper appreciation for fashion history and the craftsmanship embodied in older pieces. At the same time, this heightened demand has driven prices to unprecedented levels, placing many exceptional garments beyond the reach of all but the most committed collectors. Historical fashion also presents practical challenges for contemporary consumers. Changes in sizing standards, body proportions, and fit preferences over time can make vintage clothing difficult to wear, particularly when purchasing online. Yet despite these limitations, many people remain drawn to vintage because it offers something increasingly rare in a homogenized fashion landscape: individuality.

What does craftsmanship mean to you, beyond the obvious notion of luxury?

I have a PhD in design history and material culture, so I try to understand how methods of making and craftsmanship intersect, enhance, and empower design intention, and how an object fits into the larger cultural narrative. Craftsmanship means time, materials, creativity, and most importantly, an embodied form of knowledge. I’ve written about this with regards to textile conservation work through the concept of chronomanuality, which means the value inherent in something that has been worked by hand over time. For example, a luxury handcrafted item derives its value because it materially manifests the interplay between the maker’s body and time. When assessing craftsmanship, we should therefore never lose sight of the maker’s body. It is the maker’s physical engagement with materials—their dexterity, experience, and labor—that transforms raw matter into an object of cultural, aesthetic, and economic value. Craftsmanship is not merely a characteristic of an object; it is evidence of a deeply human process embedded within it.

Can preservation itself be seen as a form of sustainability, not through production, but through extending the cultural and physical life of a garment?

Absolutely. Through acts of care and repair, whether mending, laundering, altering, or repurposing, we can extend the life of the garments we already own, allowing them to be worn and appreciated again and again. These practices encourage a more thoughtful relationship with clothing, one that recognizes garments as objects worthy of investment, maintenance, and stewardship rather than disposability. The concept of conservation is central to this way of thinking. Interestingly, the word is used in both museological and environmental contexts, reflecting a shared commitment to preservation of resources for the future. When applied to fashion, this mindset encourages us to view clothing not as a temporary commodity but as something that can accumulate value, meaning, and memory over time. Through sustained care, garments can remain in circulation longer, reducing waste while preserving the material and personal histories embedded within them. In this sense, repair and conservation are not merely practical acts; they are expressions of respect for the resources, labour, and creativity that clothing embodies.

At what point does a garment stop being fashion and become cultural heritage?

My short answer is that all fashion is cultural heritage. Clothing is deeply symbolic of a particular time, place, and culture, and as such it carries historical meaning. To offer a longer answer, I often return to the work of the anthropologist Igor Kopytoff and his concept of singularisation: the process by which an object is removed from ordinary circulation and assigned special value. This is essentially what happens when historic garments enter museum collections. They cease to function primarily as wearable objects and instead become singularized as museum artifacts, preserved and interpreted as examples of cultural heritage. Yet singularization does not require a museum. A garment can acquire heritage value simply because it is treasured by a family, a community, or an individual. When clothing is preserved because it embodies personal memories, collective identities, or meaningful connections to the past, it takes on a significance that transcends its original function. In this sense, cultural heritage is not defined solely by institutions but by the values and meanings that people attach to objects over time.

This interview has been lightly edited.