Following Oslo’s Annual Fashion Research Symposium, we spoke to its founder and Norwegian designers about why nurturing Norway’s fashion industry takes priority over showing at the fashion week four.
By Anastasia Vartanian.
Oslo’s first Annual Fashion Research Symposium at the beginning of this month centered around the theme “Decentralizing Fashion, championing widening the fashion conversation outside the fashion week four. A collaboration between the National Museum in Oslo and the International Library of Fashion Research, the Symposium was a two-day event for critical fashion discourse and sharing research. “Can we envision the ‘periphery’ as distributed, yet globally connected fashion micro-powerhouses, further enabled by digital infrastructures?” the Symposium posed.
“The very idea of fashion capitals as centers and the rest of the world as the periphery evokes colonial ideas of ’empire,'” says Hanne Eide, one of the Symposium’s founders and curator of contemporary fashion at the National Museum. It’s a topic that has been on the agenda for a while among the fashion-literate, with platforms such as The Fashion Race Database (est. 2017) challenging our Eurocentric fashion history. 2020 lead to calls to decolonize fashion and tell previously side-lined stories.
This conversation remains relevant with working from home still prevalent and the rising cost of living making people rethink living in fashion capitals when work can be done remotely. Eide asserts that in a “post-pandemic world, an increasing number of Norwegian fashion designers and practitioners have chosen to go “off-grid” and remove themselves geographically from major fashion metropolises.” Oslo-based designer Elisabeth Stray Pedersen agrees, “I can easily work from Oslo and have clientele, work relations, and business in NY, Paris, or Milan.”
For some, decentralizing fashion means designers forgoing major fashion weeks in favor of their native industry. For others, it’s creating a successful brand in their native industry but participating in worldwide fashion events. Though there should be no need for capitals in a decentralized fashion landscape, emerging designers still benefit from collaborating with established systems. Malin Molden, the founder of clothing brand Flesh, feels like she misses out on press and exposure when not taking part in London, Paris, Milan, or NY fashion weeks.
Despite the belief that you must move to a fashion capital to “make it,” designer Cathrine Børter, founder of jewelry brand Pearl Octopuss.y, says that in her case, it’s been “the opposite.” “I’ve been getting a really nice response [from the fact that] we are a small Oslo-based brand. Today it feels like people are more into connecting with the people behind the brand,” she notes. However, she sees the value in participating in fashion weeks: “It’s giving something back to the culture we are building.”
Celine Aagaard, the founder of clothing brand ENVELOPE1976, believes “there is a much bigger focus on undiscovered and niche brands out there from all over the world. Thanks to social media, it’s easier to be discovered. But there are also so many more brands out there, so it’s also easy to be forgotten.”
Molden says, “the mindset about Norwegian fashion and art is changing, looking to the big success stories of what’s happened in Scandinavian cities such as Copenhagen and Stockholm.”
The Norwegian fashion scene has been “strongly professionalized” in the last “10 to 15 years,” according to Pedersen, with some bigger brands becoming “recognizable players internationally.” “Through this professionalization and internationalization, it’s easier for younger brands to establish themselves internationally,” she adds. Børter echoes this sentiment: “10 years ago it was quite different, [with] only a few Norwegian brands. Today we have so many, which is really inspiring and fun to be a part of.”
According to Børter, there’s a sense of community in Norway’s fashion scene, “I think people here see the value of connecting with each other now. You can’t do it all alone.” As opposed to looking towards support from the BFC or CFDA, designers have received internal support from organizations like the Norwegian Fashion Hub and Oslo Runway. The former makes “efforts to promote Norwegian design and art abroad,” says Molden. The latter, Pedersen notes, has a “good collaboration with the international press,” which helps designers with exposure. It’s partly thanks to support from the Norwegian Fashion Hub that BODEGA came about: a collaborative collection recently showcased at New York Fashion Week between Molden’s label Flesh and other Norwegian brands RAR.e Studio, Kaibosh, and Woolit.
Outside of the fashion industry’s business side, Norway has a lot to offer designers. Børter loves running a fashion brand in Oslo because “it’s local and small. People here are very chill and kind. I don’t feel any pressure to deliver – and then you relax. And if you relax, you get creative.” Pedersen says: “I like working with local materials and frameworks. It is more meaningful to me.” She also asserts that the energy in Oslo is focused on finding a sustainable framework for running a fashion business.
Moreover, the Symposium noted that the welfare society of Nordic countries creates a different premise for building a fashion culture. Indeed, this creates a “more stable ground for creating fashions,” as Pedersen told me. There should be a combination of public, governmental, and local support for success.
Pedersen thinks luxury means something different today: “What is remote, natural, high quality is a luxury.” The Symposium’s founder, Hanne Eide, believes that “Practicing at the periphery may point us towards more interesting, locally rooted, and conscious fashion futures… Locally rooted, but still with the potential for global impact.”
Images courtesy of Flesh
