Decentralizing Fashion to be Explored in Symposium – WWD

Can fashion exist anywhere?

That will be a key question when a group of researchers, academics and practitioners gather for a symposium in Oslo to discuss whether smaller fashion ecosystems can exist beyond fashion capitals. The event is being led by two artistic forces in Oslo.

With the new National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Norway up-and-running and the International Library of Fashion Research readying for a late November official opening, the two cultural institutions are working in tandem on different fronts.

In step with that, the ”Decentralizing Fashion” themed symposium will be held Friday and Saturday. The Fashion Research Symposium 2022 will entail fashion research, knowledge sharing and critical discourse. It draws from the research project “Norwegian Fashion; Cultural Production and Aesthetic Mediational Practices” by Synne Skjulstad, associate professor of Hoyskolen Kristiania.

In honor of the new National Museum’s opening this past June, it is putting a sharper focus on contemporary fashion, as evidenced by the appointment of Hanne Eide as curator of contemporary fashion. With nearly 54,000 square feet, the avant-garde museum in Oslo is attracting the design-minded as much for its 400,000-plus objects as its monumental architecture by Kleihues + Schuwerk. The museum and the International Library of Fashion Research are located on Oslo’s waterfront near the Nobel Peace Center. The two cultural hubs formed an institutional partnership some time ago to strengthen a shared mission “to put Norway on the map for the study of contemporary fashion,” according to an e-mail from Elise By Olsen, the director of the International Library of Fashion Research.

All 170 seats are already spoken for at the free symposium, which is geared for students, industry professionals, fashion enthusiasts and others. Authorities such as Kaat Debo, director of the MoMu Antwerp; Ida Falck Oien, associate professor at the Oslo Academy of Arts; Veronique Pouillard, professor of modern international history at the University of Oslo, and Jeppe Ugelvig, curator, critic and theorist and editor in chief of Viscose Journal, will speak.

Artistic autonomy, professional identity and the concept of fashion to wider fashion cultures and the industry at large will be examined, as well as how they are interwoven. The symposium will highlight artistic merit as a key force, particularly in relation to the centralized economic power held in the fashion industry. Attendees will ponder such questions as whether locations outside of the fashion capitals can be central in artistic and creative development.

In line with that