Fashion is one of our most significant cultural artifacts — an expression of our values and fascinations, and an impression of a moment in time with social, political, and economic dimensions. Yet because much of its printed matter is created for commercial or informal ends, it rarely receives the thorough study it deserves. Ultimately there is a need for intellectual enterprise, new narratives and a healthy collective environment to interact with the actual production and positioning of fashion.
Founded in 2020, the Library will become the world’s most comprehensive repository of specialized fashion research and contemporary fashion publications. We will fill a much-needed gap in the preservation of and critical engagement with fashion’s printed culture at an institutional level, and build a free, globally accessible resource for fashion researchers, industry professionals, and amateur enthusiasts. International Library of Fashion Research is actively working not only to preserve fashion’s past, but to understand its present and contribute to its future.
"Game Over! Fashion & Play", the International Library of Fashion Research’s third exhibition project, showcases a selection of fun, playful and entertaining publications, invitations, lookbooks and other ephemeral materials that take the form of a game or toy. By showcasing these whimsical and amusing objects, the exhibition aims to raise issues in relation to the world of children and its tricky connection to the fashion system, to gendered and stereotyped identities, and to virtual and alternative realities, by posing the question: to what extent is fashion a game?
Contributions by Shahan Assadourian, Carolina Davalli, Geir Haraldseth, Morna Laing, Morteza Vaseghi and Luis Venegas.
Norway
15x24cm
350g
10 €
“Paper Afore Press” is the catalogue to the International Library of Fashion Research’s second exhibition in collaboration with the National Museum’s department of conservation.
This exhibition is a nod to a medium, the one of paper, that long has been taken for granted. A plea for paper to be re-evaluated and re-though in its essence, this exhibition and catalogue aim to propose to the reader an alternative perspective on the medium that paper is for the fashion system. A possibility of communication and distribution; an asset and alternative in the vast realm of textile production, fabrication and consumption; a vessel for words that would instead be forgotten and unheard; a way of connecting people. A selection of printed objects and ephemera from the International Library of Fashion Research permanent collection is investigated through various lab and research techniques such as x-rays, scans and microscopes, where different paper fibers, textures and delicacies will unfold.
Featuring Alia Mascia, Dr. Daphne Mohajer va Pesaran, Ilaria Trame, Lydia Kamitsis, Marco Pecorari, Molly Maltman and Vassilis Zidianakis.
Norway
15x24cm
200g
10 €
Norway
15x24cm
200g
10 €
‘Decentralizing Fashion’ is published in correspondence with the inaugural Fashion Research Symposium.
Co-organized by the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, and International Library of Fashion Research, the symposium is a two-day event for fashion research, knowledge-sharing, and critical discourse.
The theme for 2022 is ‘Decentralizing Fashion’, and it builds on the research project “Norwegian Fashion: Cultural Production and Aesthetic Mediational Practices.”
‘Decentralizing Fashion’ considers fashion practice in the comparatively small creative ecosystems that exist around the world. It opens up a dialogue on concentration and dispersion, on center and periphery in fashion. How can places other than the established “fashion capitals” be central in artistic or creative development? Could fashion thrive in unlikely localities? Can fashion exist anywhere?
Contributors include ALL-IN, Dal Chodha, Else Skålvoll Thorenfeldt, Ida Eritsland, Jeppe Ugelvig, Kaat Debo, Marco Pecorari, Micah Tafari, Michelle Papillion, Namkyu Chun, Shala Monroque, Synne Skjulstad and Véronique Pouillard.
Norway
15x24cm
200g
10 €
For the Year of Queer Culture 2022, the International Fashion Research Library wanted to put forward its own vision for an outdoor exhibition project entitled "Queering Fashion", in partnership with its neighbour, the National Museum of Norway.
Fashion has always played a central role in the development of gender roles. In this project we want to open up an important conversation about inclusion and exclusion: Who is fashionable and who is not? What is fashionable and what is not? As a fashion research library, and as a large national institution like the National Museum of Norway, questions of representation are constantly present.
For this project, independent artists and personalities from the young progressive international underground scene and the queer community have been invited to look at the concepts of homosexuality through fashion, or even the homosexuality of fashion.
The aim is to show a total "exteriority" to the traditional and theoretical discourses of queer culture. This "exteriority" is the conceptual starting point of the project. Therefore, the commissioned artists for this project, photographer and filmmaker Lengua and costume designer Taylor Thoroski, have created a hybrid between a fashion film and an art film.
The exhibition project is also accompanied by a comprehensive reading list incorporating the International Library of Fashion Research's permanent collection as a living source of exploration and intellectual expansion.
This reading list is physically presented in the form of a "Queering Room" temporarily installed in the Polestar space in Oslo. This piece, and the project as a whole, will also travel to New York where it will be exhibited for a month, in collaboration with Printed Matter in Chelsea.
Together we draw parallels between fashion prints and 'artist books', compiling books, independent magazines and other ephemeral fashion and queer prints published outside of institutional publishing frameworks.
Norway
15x24cm
200g
10 €