08/21/2026
🎓 Intern Report! This year, 20 university students are participating in FHS’s Education Program, crossing the Atlantic for career-defining internships. This week, we’re featuring Sophia Hernando, a Fashion Studies candidate at Parsons School of Design, who spent her summer interning at the Palais Galliera.
✨ Under the supervision of Alexandre Samson, Sophia contributed to several archival and research projects that revealed the essential role museums play in preserving fashion history. She organized and catalogued a major donation from former model Joelle Thomas, whose career included work for Dior, Lanvin, Courrèges, and Nina Ricci, while also documenting her later commitment to anti-racism advocacy. Through this work, Sophia discovered how personal archives preserve not only garments and photographs, but also the stories of the people who shaped the fashion industry.
She also helped identify and catalogue runway-show negatives from the 1990s and 2000s, contributing to the museum’s photography archive, and conducted provenance research on newly acquired fashion pieces. Later in her internship, she carried out in-depth research on designers including Ossie Clark, Celia Birtwell, and Jacqueline Godard, using archival publications to reconstruct their histories and support future collection documentation. Reflecting on her experience, Sophia writes: “To see the historical impact and influence of fashion, how it reflects into all aspects of humanity and culture, is the reason I am so invested in the research that I do at Musée Galliera.”
Through this internship, Sophia strengthened her archival, research, and curatorial skills while gaining a deeper appreciation for the role museums play in preserving fashion heritage for future generations.
✨ Follow along as we continue to spotlight the inspiring experiences of our Education Program interns. Want to support our Education program? Click the link in our bio! 👩🎓
