The Italian Foot-In-Print. Traces of Italian Fashion Printed Matter.
Tuesday, March 26, 2024 – 1:14–Friday, May 31, 2024 – 12:16
“The Italian Foot-In-Print. Traces of Italian Fashion Printed Matter” is both a new curatorial intervention by Guest Researcher Carolina Davalli and International Library of Fashion Research’s fourth exhibition project.
With its boot-like figure, Italy has left a major footprint on International Library of Fashion Research’s permanent collection. From Italian brands’ catalogs and magazines, to Italian practitioners which collaborated to national and international projects, passing through Italian fashion exhibition’s catalogs; the Library hosts a wide and heterogeneous archive of Italy’s fashion heritage. Italy’s influence in fashion printed culture found its way in an international collection based in Oslo, displaying the pervasiveness of Made in Italy within the fashion system as a whole.
The exhibition stems from Carolina Davalli’s PhD research which studies public access to fashion printed matter within the capillary yet under researched network of repositories and archives in the Italian landscape. It is almost paradoxical to think of flying to Oslo to gain access to Italian fashion printed matter, yet Italy-based fashion researchers struggle to gain access to certain communication materials in their home country. The materials showcased aim to trace an overarching, but non-exhaustive, history of contemporary Italian fashion printed culture production, and to insert Oslo in the map of relevant archives and libraries for Italian fashion research. The exhibition also hosts a reading room with a selection materials available for consultation.
We would like to thank the students of Kristiania University College, under the guidance of Professor Vésma K. McQuillan, and Holgers and Inguna Eleri from the design studio H2E, for participating in the initial brainstorming for the exhibition.
