A visual journey through an extensive collection of fashion ephemera housed at the International Library of Fashion Research in Oslo, the world's most comprehensive repository of specialized fashion research and contemporary fashion publications. Aude Fellay discusses the challenges facing fashion research today.
I approach the man behind the glass screen. He doesn't look at me. I hand him my passport. "Why are you visiting Norway?" he asks, flipping through its pages. "To work", I reply, simply. "What kind of work?" "Research", I respond revelling in the evasiveness (surely, a privilege). He speaks: "What kind of research?" I finally spill the beans: "fashion research". He repeats the F word as his eyes finally meet mine. Norway and fashion. Fashion and research. I can't work out which words have thrown him. Perhaps all of them.
Fashion with a capital F goes with Paris. Research goes with science. What's the point of studying something so frivolous? Can one really think through fashion? Yes sir, my sense of self hinges on it. And that is how I pay my rent. In this case, it involves writing something about the International Library of Fashion Research for the glossy pages you, readers, are holding in your hands. The library holds fashion ephemera in the form of printed matter, which includes show invitations, studio memos, look books, a range of fashion magazines and a modest selection of academic writing. Hence Revue Faire's interest in the library and my two-day visit to Oslo.