Fashion Flashbacks
Saturday, April 5, 2025 – 8:00–Sunday, August 31, 2025 – 17:00
Earlier this year, the International Library of Fashion Research was asked to accept their most comprehensive donation yet – a generous collection of 200,000 diapositives, including intricate and historically invaluable fashion show documentation from 1992 to 2004. The original collection stemmed from Sonja Hugentobler, a Swiss writer, photographer and trend-forecaster who covered the seasonal pret-a-porter shows in Milano and Paris from the 90s through 2013. Today she has totally left the industry. The donation was facilitated by the BA Fashion Design at the Basel Academy of Art and Design – FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland.
Despite the fact that ILFR’s current collection excludes photos and negatives, the collection of Hugentobler raised immediate interest. Rather than photos, this was historically valuable documentation and research material. Ephemeral imagery, where each dias is a time capsule of a flimsy fashion show – a certain moment in time that is over and passed in no time. The massive donation was accepted and packed up before the two pallets were on their way in a truck from Basel to Oslo, with the generous support of Steen & Strøm. The diapositives were scanned and digitized, and this is the first time these images see the light of day.
For the exhibition “Fashion Flashbacks”, International Library of Fashion Research has carefully selected diapositives from the donation, showing some of the most seminal collections of international fashion designers – from Armani and Bluemarine, Chanel and Christian Dior, Comme des Garcons and Dirk Bikkembergs, Dries Van Noten and Gianfranco Ferré, Gucci by Tom Ford and Helmut Lang, Hermès by Margiela and Issey Miyake, Junya Watanabe and Louis Vuitton, Martin Margiela and Prada, Romeo Gigli and Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood and Yohji Yamamoto. The images are accompanied by archival ephemera from the International Library of Fashion Research’s collection.
«Fashion Flashbacks» is on view in an empty store space at Steen & Strøm from 5th of April 2025 through August 31st 2025, and is free & open for all.
