Regulatory announcements

A FRONT ROW SEAT AT FASHION HISTORY: YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP AND BLOOMSBURY PARTNER TO BRING FASHION VIDEO ARCHIVE TO EDUCATIONAL MARKET

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc is pleased to announce a partnership with YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP (YNAP) to make rare fashion show footage pre-dating the rise of digital formats available to the educational market for the first time. The YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP Runway Archive Collection offers an unrivalled window onto fashion history between 1979 and 2003. YNAP has been digitizing and adding descriptors since that time to make the extraordinary content fully discoverable, while also working closely with key fashion institutions to support student learning.

Showcasing hundreds of hours of footage from the world's most influential designers, 3,000 videos trace fashion history over two of its most transformational decades and chronicle the development of the runway from showcase to spectacle.

Kathryn Earle, Managing Director of Bloomsbury Digital Resources, said: "We're thrilled to be making this priceless resource available to the educational market exclusively through Bloomsbury. The period covered by the archive saw the disruptive impact of innovative designers such as the Antwerp Six, Rei Kawakubo and Hussein Chalayan; it spans more than two decades of London, Paris, New York and Milan runway shows and includes absolutely priceless footage, such as Alexander McQueen's 1992 Jack the Ripper graduate show, Jean Paul Gaultier's controversial 'Rabbi Chic' show, extraordinary Westwood and rare Galliano, as well as the radical Belgian Martin Margiela. It is an absolute treasure trove for fashion students and researchers as well as anyone interested in broader cultural and aesthetic trends of the period. It's a miracle that this footage has survived. Alongside a rapidly growing suite of products that contribute to Bloomsbury's digital strategy, this archive will be an absolute jewel in our fashion offering."

The footage will be accompanied by hundreds of exclusive, scholarly articles providing essential context. Shedding light on key collections, the evolution of trends, colours, individual designers' work, the performance art of staging a runway show, and the rise of the supermodel, content will be specially curated by world-renowned fashion historian and Director of the Museum at FIT in New York, Dr Valerie Steele.

Tara Tierney, Digital Collections Curator at YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP, said: "We feel Bloomsbury is the perfect partner to bring this priceless content to new generations of students and researchers. We have always known the value of the archive to the educational community and are pleased to have found the ideal partner to deliver it. As pioneers at the forefront of fashion, this historic archive provides a great link to the future and we are excited to share this unique footage with the fashion students and academics globally."

The resource will be made available for streaming on the multi-award-winning Bloomsbury Fashion Central platform in 2019.

For further information, please contact:

Notes to Editors

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc is an award-winning, innovative and global independent publisher of fiction, non-fiction, children's, specialist trade and academic publishing. The group's overall mission is to publish works of excellence and originality in print and digital formats, serving our communities of authors, customers and readers with the highest possible quality content that will inspire, educate and entertain. We are one of the few publishers with a diverse product portfolio that reaches across general trade, specialist communities, school and higher education markets with a multi-channel and multimedia approach.

Bloomsbury Digital Resources

In 2016, Bloomsbury Publishing announced a strategic plan to accelerate the growth of digital revenues by creating a dedicated Division and investing in new product launches and infrastructure to support the specialist requirements of the Academic and Professional library markets. Our digital products have won a host of Awards, including the Dartmouth Medal and the R. R. Hawkins PROSE Award.

YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP

YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP is the world's leading online luxury fashion retailer. The Group is a Global company with Anglo-Italian roots, the result of a game-changing merger, which in October 2015, brought together YOOX GROUP and THE NET -A-PORTER GROUP; the two companies had revolutionized the luxury fashion industry since their birth in 2000.

YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP is a unique business with an unrivalled offering including multi-brand in-season online stores NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER, and multi-brand off-season online stores YOOX and THE OUTNET, as well as numerous ONLINE FLAGSHIP STORES, all "Powered by YNAP". Through a joint venture established in 2012, YOOX NET -A-PORTER GROUP has partnered with Kering to manage the ONLINE FLAGSHIP STORES of several of the French group's luxury brands.

In 2016, YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP joined forces with Symphony, an entity controlled by Mohamed Alabbar's family, to establish a ground-breaking joint venture to create the Middle East's undisputed leader for online luxury retail.

Uniquely positioned in the high growth online luxury sector, YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP has an unrivalled client base of more than 3 million high-spending customers, over 840 million visits worldwide and consolidated net revenues of € 2.1 billion in 2017. The Group has offices and operations in the United States, Europe, Middle East, Japan, China and Hong Kong and delivers to more than 180 countries around the world.

For further information: www.ynap.com

Linkedin: YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP | Twitter: @YNAP | Instagram: @YNAP

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