The Istituto Politecnico Internazionale della Moda or ‘Polimoda’, located in Florence and Prato, was founded in 1986 to provide for the training needs of the fashion industry. Its documentation centre, in Florence, specialises in contemporary fashion and the clothing industry. A wide range of materials – including periodicals, slides, videos, forecasts, and a small collection of actual garments – is mostly on open access, and is represented in its entirety in a database which allows for different kinds of online searching.