LIVING
LEGACY

Studies on brand heritage have made a decisive contribution to understanding how brands draw upon their history to build identity, legitimacy, and differentiation. The foundational research developed from the late 2000s established the conceptual foundations of brand heritage by identifying its principal components and demonstrating its capacity to generate authenticity, credibility and strategic value (Urde, Greyser & Balmer, 2007; Hudson & Balmer, 2013; Balmer & Burghausen, 2015a, 2015b; Dion & Mazzalovo, 2016; Pecot & De Barnier, 2017). At the same time, various studies demonstrated that heritage activation strengthens the relationship between consumers and brands by generating positive emotions, trust, attachment and commitment (Wiedmann et al., 2011; Wuestefeld et al., 2012).

In recent years, academic interest has evolved from the definition of brand heritage towards the study of the processes through which legacy is activated, reinterpreted and transmitted in social, cultural and technological contexts undergoing continuous transformation. This evolution has fostered an increasingly close dialogue with the emerging field of fashion heritage, understood as the study of fashion heritage in all its complexity: brands, archives, collections, artisanal knowledge, cultural practices, visual languages and memories that shape its identity as a cultural phenomenon. From this perspective, legacy ceases to belong exclusively to companies and becomes a shared heritage that articulates processes of creation, communication, preservation, and innovation.

The fashion industry today constitutes one of the most fertile settings for analysing this transformation. Recent research has shown how heritage fashion houses revitalise their identity through digital environments (Muñoz Domínguez & Díaz Soloaga, 2021), integrate their history into audiovisual formats such as fashion films (Díaz Soloaga, Muñoz Domínguez & Zhou, 2023), or reinterpret their heritage in response to the challenges of sustainability, the circular economy and new social demands (Muñoz Domínguez & Díaz Soloaga, 2025). The notion of “heritage activation” makes it possible to understand how cultural heritage becomes a strategic resource for innovation, differentiation, and the construction of meaning.

This shift is connected to an established line of research within Fashion Studies, which understands fashion as a tangible and intangible cultural heritage whose preservation requires new forms of research, documentation, and mediation. In this context, Maria Luisa Frisa has argued that fashion is a cultural archive and a narrative device capable of interpreting social transformations, while Sofia Gnoli has shown how fashion archives have become genuine spaces for research, creativity and innovation, fundamental to understanding the relationships between memory, identity and contemporary culture (Gnoli, 2025).

From complementary perspectives, various studies have shown how heritage also functions as a discursive resource capable of conferring authority, credibility and legitimacy upon brands in digital environments (Zanola, Stachel & Greco, 2026).

At the same time, immersive technologies are transforming the ways in which heritage is experienced by shifting the emphasis from storytelling to storyliving experiences, in which audiences cease to be spectators and become active participants in cultural memory (Stacchiotti, 2025).

The recovery of historical archives, the revaluation of traditional crafts, the digitisation of documentary collections, and the development of artificial intelligence tools capable of generating, recreating and interpreting historical content illustrate the growing prominence that memory has acquired in both fashion research and professional practice. Added to this is the widespread circulation of archival images and materials across digital platforms—a new form of mediated nostalgia (Merchant & Rose, 2013)—which raises new questions concerning the authenticity, authorship, preservation and transmission of cultural heritage.

In this context, the question is no longer simply what constitutes the legacy of a brand, an institution or a tradition, but how that legacy is continually reinterpreted, negotiated, and reinvented in order to remain culturally relevant.

Living Legacy: Reinventing Fashion and Tradition in the Twenty-First Century proposes to open an interdisciplinary space for dialogue on the multiple ways in which fashion constructs, activates, communicates and transforms its legacy, turning heritage into a driver of creativity, innovation and cultural production.