Fashion research symposium 2025

Programme

10.00 Registration & coffee

10.20 Welcome by Hanne Eide, curator of fashion at the National Museum & Elise By Olsen, founding director of International Library of Fashion Research.

10.35 Ephemeral Matters Revisited – introduction by Marco Pecorari
In this talk, Pecorari rethinks the exhibition 'Ephemeral Matters. Into the Fashion Archive' presenting the concept, the design and the curatorial strategies adopted. By doing so, he explores the ways this exhibition displayed the various meanings of fashion ephemera while investigating the value creation processes around these flimsy documents today.

10.55 Into the Fashion Archive – Rare Books Paris & Diktats in Conversation with Hanne Eide & Marco Pecorari
Created by collectors and historians Antoine Bucher and Nicolas Montagne Diktats is a bookstore specializing in fashion books and documents dating from the 16th century to the mid-20th century. Since 2004, they have been at the forefront of this field and collaborating with several international institutions. Gregory Brooks is a former fashion designer for brands as Maison Martin Margiela, Louis Vuitton and Hermès. He is also the founder of RareBooksParis: an online bookstore that collects rare, out of print documents, and some of fashion’s most collectable iconography. This conversation will expand on the meaning of collecting and giving value to the discarded and overlooked.

11.25 An introduction to QZAP – a filmed interview with Milo Miller
In 2003, LGBTQ+ activists, graphic designer and archivist Milo Millier started, with historian Christopher Wilder, the Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP): an archive preserving queer zines and ephemeral objects with the aim of making them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest In DIY publishing and underground queer communities. Particularly on issues of identity formation and embodiment, the QZAP is a typical example of how queer archives function, to use the words of Ann Cvetkovich, as “an archive of feeling”, a space where ephemeral materials have the capacity to record and reactivate a material and immaterial history of trauma and resistance. A short film interview with Milo Miller & QZAP – from the exhibition “Ephemeral Matters: Into the Fashion Archive” – will be shown. Produced by the National Museum & directed by Nicholas Sullivan Hellsegg.

11.35 Coffee break

12.00 Fashion as Archive vs. Fashion as Social Memory – talk by Ina Blom
Fashion does not just exist «in» time but is itself a time machine of sorts - a cultural practice that both marks and produces time. In this talk, Blom discusses in what ways archive theory and theories of social memory may illuminate our understanding of fashion's afterlives and its various materialities.

12.20 A Life’s Work, A Life’s Wardrobe: The Fashion Collection at the Zaha Hadid Foundation – talk by Catherine Howe & Jihane Dyer
The Zaha Hadid Foundation has a collection spanning Hadid’s work across architecture, design and art. It also includes her vast personal wardrobe of clothing, shoes and accessories, which became a popular source of fascination during her lifetime, as well as related ephemera, self-designed pieces and fashion drawings. We will reflect on the early stages of critically engaging with ZHF’s sartorial collections in light of our distinctive role as a legacy foundation with a broad public mission. We will highlight the variety of approaches that we are developing towards their research, preservation and display, such as foregrounding Hadid’s own words and self-presentation, and re-embedding garments within the expanded contexts of her life and work.

12.40 The Affective Archive: Issey Miyake, Materiality, and Memory-Making – talk by Steffi Stouri & Vassilis Zidianakis (ATOPOS cvc)
This presentation examines the intersection of Miyake's innovative practices with the notion of an affective archive, a dynamic space where memory, materiality, and embodied experience converge. Drawing from the affective archives program, we explore how objects—such as Miyake’s pleated paper garments—are sites of re-enactment, where memories are continually re-mobilized, reshaped, and embodied by those who encounter them.

13.00 Break

14.00 Fashion is Not an Art Like Any Other – Carla Sozzani in Conversation with Elise By Olsen
Italian magazine editor, gallerist and businesswoman Carla Sozzani walks us through her decades of extensive experience in creating fashionable afterlives — through her work with the artistic footprint of her late sister and Italian Vogue editor Franca Sozzani, her long-time friend and late designer Azzedine Alaia and her current endeavours in her own Fondazione Sozzani. As she is spearheading initiatives around these archival fashion legacies, what made Carla Sozzani an eager collector of both printed matter in her personal library, and seminal clothing pieces in her own private wardrobe, in the first place? In conversation with editor & librarian Elise By Olsen, Sozzani steps back to the beginning.

14.20 Storage Unpacked: The Archive of Shelley Fox – talk by Shelley Fox
In this talk Shelley Fox examines the role of her own design archive, posing questions of why she kept it and what it could mean for her future work. It is an archive that has been stored across various geographies and travelled over time. ‘Ruination’ (a word borrowed from the essay ‘Fashion Stranger than Fiction; Shelley Fox’, by Caroline Evans) is key in describing what can be perceived as part of the Shelley Fox aesthetic, and through the unpacking of the archive has led to further ruination amidst an uninvited collaboration with mice; bringing forth new beginnings where time allows for a different perspective.

14.40 Mutant State – talk by Eli Rosenbloom
This talk explores the Fashion Research Library Collection as a Mutant State—the afterlife of a century of publishing, which saw fashion reach the pinnacle of printed content innovation before evolving beyond its time. It examines key nodes––Duchamp’s Green Box (1930s), ASPEN Magazine(1960s), American West Coast conceptual artists (1970s), Yohji Yamamoto (1990s), Visionaire (2000s)––and how they morphed into fashion’s reinvention of production, presentation, and distribution. As formats became more radical, content budgets soared, and elite talents converged, this “over-evolution” collapsed with the 2008 crash—it was ahead of its time, and it foreshadowed notable currents shaping today’s media landscape. Central to this history is Steven Mark Klein, whose archive seeded the ILFR. A month before Klein’s passing, Eli recorded a final conversation with him on the century of publishing that shaped his collection. This conversation is what ultimately inspired the Mutant State presentation.

15.00 Coffee break

15.20 – A matter of seeing: 90’s Fashion Through the Eyes of an Insider Outsider – Kirsten Landwehr in Conversation with Alexandra Bondi de Antoni
Angelica Blechschmidt, the pioneering but now largely forgotten editor-in-chief of VOGUE Germany between 1989 and 2003, used a small snapshot camera to document what others might have missed, and used what she saw in her work. While for Blechschmidt her camera was a way of coping with the madness of the fashion world, since her death the 180,000 negatives are slowly being rediscovered for a contemporary audience, creating an alternative discourse on the social reality of an often talked about time. In conversation with the owner of the archive, Kirsten Landwehr, the writer and host of the Instagram account @archive_angelica_blechschmidt Alexandra Bondi de Antoni discusses how the legacy of an almost forgotten woman can be built up.

15.40 Designing Ephemeral Heritage – talk by Edoardo Ferrari
Design, in the context of editorial production, is not merely the structuring of visual and material elements but a continuous process of constructing and negotiating meaning. The archive functions as a dynamic space where the relational nature of publishing unfolds—an ephemeral yet vital trace of the people, conversations, and exchanges that shape editorial objects. Examining the contemporary state of Nordic fashion publishing, this research draws from the permanent collection of the International Library of Fashion Research in Oslo, with a particular focus on independent magazines. As fluid and collective platforms, magazines capture multiple voices, offering a crucial lens to map the evolving landscape of practitioners. At the same time, they act as time capsules, encapsulating the aesthetics, discourses, and socio-cultural dynamics of a given moment while preserving traces of production networks and creative exchanges. Through this perspective, the archive is not merely a repository but an active catalyst of knowledge and historical continuity.

16.00 Archiving Ephemeral Spaces: Fashion Shows – Jochen Eisenbrand in Conversation with Vesma McQuillan
The first fashion shows around 1900 took place in the discrete and private salons of the fashion houses. In the Mid-Century, the runway emerged as a functional and omnipresent background. In past decades, performance, narratives, and scenography, have become recurrent components of fashion shows, yet they have not been the subject of archival practice until recently. Digital archives exist, and some fashion houses, such as Prada, make them accessible on their website. But what about the physical? Can we archive the physicality of a fashion show that is epiphenomenon of fashion practices, not the phenomenon itself? This conversation delves into the emerging practices of archiving these ephemeral spaces and their remnants, balancing between digital and physical realms. We will explore how fashion shows, traditionally seen as fleeting moments, are beginning to become a subject of archival collections.

16.20 “Real Smell Molecule Recording, Replication & Reproduction” – talk by Sissel Tolaas
Smell is more than a sensation—it is a powerful form of communication, encoding memories, emotions, and environments beyond language or sight. Deeply linked to the brain’s memory and emotional centers, smell shapes perception and behavior in profound ways. But what happens when a space, an object, or an era is archived, locked away from sensory experience? Can recording and recreating real smell molecules reconnect us to lost moments, even alter established narratives? Reintroducing a smell—a garment’s original molecular signature, a vanished atmosphere—revives its story, transforming it from a static artifact into a living experience. If smell is information, how can we use it to challenge preservation norms and redefine memory itself?

16.40- 17.00 Final remarks