We're excited to welcome architect and fashion researcher Vésma Kontere McQuillan for her Guest Salon «Unboxing Fashion Spaces». Join us on Tuesday 8th of September from 18.00-20.00. Free coffee & notebooks. Welcome!

Vésma Kontere McQuillan is an architect, fashion researcher, and Professor of Interior Architecture at Kristiania University of Applied Sciences in Oslo, as well as a contributing fashion editor at FRAME Magazine. Her research and practice focus on the intersection of fashion and architecture, particularly the spatial, material, and mediated dimensions of fashion presentations, archives, exhibitions, and runway shows.

She is the author of Fashion Spaces: A Theoretical View (FRAME Publishers, 2020), the first book dedicated to the architectural aspects of fashion presentations, and has developed Architectural Fashion Analysis (AFA) as a method for examining fashion through spatial and architectural perspectives. Her writing on fashion, architecture, and runway spaces has been published by Vitra Design Museum, Palgrave Macmillan, Manuela Éditions, and the International Journal of Fashion Studies, among others.

For her Guest Salon she will unbox her recent donation to International Library of Fashion Research's permanent collection: including books, magazines, ephemera, and other printed materials actively collected and used over the years to further develop her research into fashion spaces. Part of the fun will be the element of surprise: the boxes were packed several months ago, and McQuillan no longer remembers exactly what is inside them. Each opened box will therefore be a discovery for both the audience and herself. As the materials reappear, she will reflect on how particular books, magazines, images, and fragments have influenced her research and shaped her understanding of fashion as a spatial practice.

This is the 20th edition of Guest Salons; an active meeting point for free conversations around and beyond fashion. The series is generously supported by Sparebankstiftelsen DNB.