The corpus of knowedge that was assembled or published about two Provençal costumes between 1937 and 1943 gives rise here to the analysis of three issues in this paper: the question of the work which (in the context of the Vichy regime or not) was motivated by a project of cultural maintenance; the question of the museographical simultaneously undertaken at the Mnatp and at an important regional museum; and, finally, the question of the knowledge gathered on the the Arlesian-type costume in the late 1930s. While evidence can indeed be found of the implementation of research methods, it is clear that the local antiquarian research durably contaminated professional museographical procedures.