The International Library of Fashion Research in Oslo, an exciting and vibrant space preserving and showcasing rare fashion ephemera and other ‘printed’ fashion heritage, opened a new exhibition: “The Italian Foot in Print. Traces of Italian fashion printed matter”

Guest Curated by Carolina Davalli, the exhibition stems from a thorough research on the major footprint Italian Fashion left in the International Library of Fashion Research’s permanent collection.

The Library hosts a heterogeneous archive of Italy’s fashion heritage: from Italian brands’ catalogs and magazines, to Italian practitioners which collaborated to national and international projects, passing through Italian fashion exhibition’s catalogs. Carolina Davalli’s PhD research serves as basis of the display. Focusing on  public access to fashion printed matter within the capillary yet under researched network of repositories and archives in the Italian landscape, Davalli uncovers precious materials while asking how and why do there incredible and rare materials landed in Oslo, where they are carefully preserved and made accessible to a wide audience.

This is indeed an interesting question, to which the exhibitions does not give a definitive answer. it instead opens up the collection and puts Oslo in the map of relevant archives and libraries for Italian fashion research.