Collecting a certain type of fashion paper is seen as cool, magazines and fashion books are coveted and hoarded as status symbols. But collecting the other paper associated with fashion – press releases, cover letters, label tags – is often considered inferior, or overlooked entirely.
It is this disparity that Norwegian curator and Wallet magazine editor Elise By Olsen addresses with her International Fashion Research Library, a vast library in central Oslo committed to ephemeral fashion prints.
The area opened in 2022 as part of the launch of the new Oslo National Museum in the city centre. Occupying two floors of a 19th-century Stasjonsmesterboligen (a former 19th-century exercise station) across from the new National Museum building, the interior is an austere, well-lit area, filled with elegantly stacked commercial shelves with clinic grey boxes classified as ‘Gucci’, ‘Jil Sander’ and ‘Marni’, filled with one and both types of trendy paper you can imagine, adding tags, invitations, and flyers. Among the collection is a lack of magazines, and the International Fashion Research Library intentionally focuses on the kind of published fashion fabrics that many other people wouldn’t hesitate to publish. maintain.
The collection began in 2019 when Olsen befriended cultural critic Steven Mark Klein and inherited his wide diversity of fashion fabrics published after his death in 2021. When the opportunity arose for Olsen to have a permanent home for the archive in Norway, he He quickly established a collaboration with the new National Museum in Oslo and, in doing so, secured the inheritance of the archive’s rare published pieces with a permanent residence in the Norwegian capital.
ILFR remain committed to creating an easy to access environment where students, scholars and strangers can drop in, grab a box from the shelf, and have their own moment of discovery. Here she speaks to Grace Banks about the importance of a decidedly anti-institutional fashion library, as the ILFR plans its archive expansion.
The library is right in the center of Oslo in an old train station opposite the new National Museum and around the corner from the Nobel Peace Centre. What did you like about the space when you first saw it?
It has been vital to make the International Fashion Research Library a truly available project. We wanted to attract younger people and a museum like this can often feel a little alienating, which was the last thing I was looking for. So the location in the middle of the town and the fact that we are in a very old building allowed us to stand out a little. We have two floors in this construction; For me, having worked as a curator before, I think there is something magical about having a very small area and looking to make the most of anything small and intimate.
We have preserved much of the interior layout since it is an indexed building. I wanted the space to be clean and a place where people could just show up and look at things. We added UV films to all windows to protect the fabrics from the sunlight.
This whole area resonates so much with my coolest fashion obsessions that I keep things. When the International Fashion Research Library first went public around 2020, it temporarily gained a lot of good fortune thanks to its honest commitment to fashion printing that is more than just magazines. or table books. How was the transfer of those archives here to Oslo?
When Steven Klein asked me if I would live up to his legacy, it was a great honor and also a wonderful responsibility. At that time I was traveling a lot and had no space at home. I mean, for this type of thing, who does it? But I have to do it. I then began a verbal exchange with the new National Museum to secure a space, as I knew that fashion was the most important thing on the calendar when the new museum was being created. But I collected and conceptualized everything, basically thinking to myself: what is a 21st century library?
An archive at the International Fashion Research Library
How did you start organizing everything?
At the moment everything is categorized by brand, but maybe it shouldn’t be: we want to see how other people use the area for quite some time before making a decision. But since we are an informal and available establishment where anyone, any type of tourist or retiree can enter; If you come in and see all those brands, I think it’s an easier way to access the library. But again, if you’re a teacher or a teacher, you want to jump right into it. So we have to be a little flexible for both.
Much of the curtains at the demonstration were destined to be destroyed. They are disposable: invitations to shows, press releases, personalized envelopes. Why did you need to keep that? It’s like you’re bringing these discarded fashion curtains back to life.
The disposable facet is everything that I find super interesting. When other people won those materials, especially a journalist and even buyers, they used them as a reference and then threw them away. Many of the documents in the library are very popular materials.
The collection is still growing, is that through people donating materials?
Yes, many other people around the world send things. I know that Virgil’s press team, just before his death, had prepared a lot of donations. We still need to set it up for them to ship to us.
You have a beautiful holographic Marni invitation from 2002, as well as a box full of Dries Van Noten invitations. How do you see the variety you present, with so many donations coming in?
I think the naivety is such that I have to hold on to it. We are a library, we do not intend to have exclusivity with any logo and I think it is mandatory to distance ourselves from the political dynamics of the fashion industry. It is intended to be an unbiased terrain.
People think that young people are practically obsessed, and it’s actually appealing that you founded this company and Wallet when you were young.
I see it as an antidote to the rapid global change we live in, and I think it’s healthy. Young people today buy more books than before, which, of course, can be related to wealth. But I also think that there is an interest, a preference for concentrating attention on a single object.
What effect do you want the library to have on visitors?
I want people not to be afraid of the space and its content. So you don’t want the white gloves to look at anything, the room is rarely completely silent, and that’s because I want people to feel comfortable here.
A lot of what I have in mind for the library has to do with this idea of delay. It’s interesting when people are looking around the library and consulting the collection, they add and browse all the things that they like and leave them out, so you can see what people are looking at. It’s almost like a real life analogue algorithm, in a way you can really track peers and what people study, that concept is exciting to me.
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