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FashionDB
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The FashionDB Wikibase store information about the (recent) history of fashion. Data comes from Wikidata, Wikipedia, Vogue and the Fashion Model Directory. For each piece of information the provenance of the data is made clear through the use of the reference tool. FashionDB has been populated using WikibaseIntegrator and other custom made code. On completion of FashionDB the source code will be made available and open for everyone to use from the traopia GitHub account.
WHY FashionDB
The scope of FashionDB is to promote research in the field of fashion history, as the structured format of Wikibase offer users the possibility of query such a database.
Example queries over FashionDB
Where did the fashion designers get their education and when?
PREFIX wbt: <https://fashionwiki.wikibase.cloud/prop/direct/>
PREFIX wb: <https://fashionwiki.wikibase.cloud/entity/>
PREFIX pq: <https://fashionwiki.wikibase.cloud/prop/qualifier/>
PREFIX ps: <https://fashionwiki.wikibase.cloud/prop/statement/>
PREFIX p: <https://fashionwiki.wikibase.cloud/prop/>
SELECT ?fashiondesignerLabel ?schoolLabel ?startDate ?endDate WHERE {
?fashiondesigner p:P9 ?statement.
?statement ps:P9 ?school.
OPTIONAL {
?statement pq:P15 ?startDate.
}
OPTIONAL {
?statement pq:P16 ?endDate.
}
SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en". }
}
Where did the fashion designers worked (at which fashion houses,..) and when and in which role?
PREFIX wbt: <https://fashionwiki.wikibase.cloud/prop/direct/>
PREFIX wb: <https://fashionwiki.wikibase.cloud/entity/>
PREFIX pq: <https://fashionwiki.wikibase.cloud/prop/qualifier/>
PREFIX ps: <https://fashionwiki.wikibase.cloud/prop/statement/>
PREFIX p: <https://fashionwiki.wikibase.cloud/prop/>
SELECT ?fashiondesignerLabel ?employerLabel ?startDate ?endDate ?occupationTitle WHERE {
?fashiondesigner p:P10 ?statement.
?statement ps:P10 ?employer.
OPTIONAL {
?statement pq:P15 ?startDate.
?statement pq:P16 ?endDate.
?statement pq:P25 ?occupationTitle.
}
SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en". }
}
From Text to FashionDB
Most of the information available on the (recent) history of fashion can be found in texts. For the construction and completion of FashionDB we extracted part of the information from texts using Large Language Models.
How is information structured?
Data is stored in Wikibase in the shape of Items. Each item is accorded its own page. Items are used to represent all the things in human knowledge, including topics, concepts, and objects. In the WikiFashion Wikibase all the items are related to fashion and the history of fashion and of the fashion designers. In this Wikibase you can find entities for the fashion designer, countries and places where the fashion designers lived and worked, academic institutions and fashion houses. For example, the "1988 Summer Olympics", "love", "Elvis Presley", and "gorilla" can all be items. Items are made up of Statements that describe detailed characteristics of an Item. A statement (graph format: Subject-Predicate-Object) is how the information we know about an item - the data we have about it - gets recorded in your Wikibase instance. This happens by pairing a property with at least one value; this pair is at the heart of a statement. Statements also serve to connect items to each other, resulting in a linked data structure.
Check out this visualization of the linked data structure
The property in a statement describes the data value, and can be thought of as a category of data like "color", "population," or "Commons media" (files hosted on Wikimedia Commons). The value in the statement is the actual piece of data that describes the item. Each property has a data type which defines the kind of values allowed in statements with that property. For example, the property “date of birth” will only accept data in the format of a date.
Check out this visualisation of the structure of an item
Example In order to record information about the occupation of Marie Curie, you would need to add a statement to the item for Marie Curie (Q7186). Using the property, occupation (P106), you could then add the value physicist (Q169470). You could also add the value chemist (Q593644). Note how both chemist and physicist are each their own item, thereby allowing Marie Curie to be linked to these items.
