Wunderkind Olsen unveils Oslo library for fashion magazines.

At 22, Elise Bye Olson has spent much of her life resisting being ignored by what she calls the “legitimate” fashion world.

At 8, she started a style and culture blog; At 13, she became one of the world’s youngest editors when she founded, published and edited Recens, an under-18 glossy style magazine. (“It was unprecedented for young people to be involved in both the cultural discourse and the fashion industry,” she says.) She later launched a fashion industry journal called Valet, which WWD described as a “sharp, critical pen.”

Hailing from the Oslo suburbs, Wintertynd worked as a cultural and branding consultant and at age 17 joined a creative residency at Google in Paris, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, a curator and art critic. Her early magazines were born of frustration: “People in fashion hold their ground, even if they’re not as important as they think they are.”

Now, Olsen has embarked on her most ambitious project to date as the founding director of the International Fashion Research Library.

It’s a collection of rare printed ephemera that claims to be “the world’s most comprehensive repository of exclusive fashion research and contemporary fashion publications,” including two tons of magazines, scrapbooks, show invitations, catalogs and more dating from the mid-1970s to the mid-1970s. He offered. It opens in October, is free and open to all.

The home will be the former Oslo West railway station (Olsen and her team share the grand Italianate building with the Nobel Peace Center and others) and the newly opened Norwegian National Museum on the grounds of her collaborators and supporters. Olsen worked closely with Hanne Eid, the museum’s fashion and costume coordinator, to get the project off the ground. “We have a common mission,” Eid says.

Olsen, with a bit of white hair and delicately tattooed wrists, shows me around the grounds, rounding up builders and engineers. When completed, there will be two floors: one for exhibitions, the other for shelves and study.

How does Olson describe the library? “As a neutral space for fashion talk – that’s my mission,” she says. “The archive will all be on the bookshelf. It looks like a physical study room, there will be a big table, there you can use the file on the site, printing and scanning equipment. . . “

But there will be no clothes, because the purpose of the library is not to study fashion, but how to deceive. “We take off the clothes and just look at processes and techniques. No dummies, no mannequins.”

Running around a bright, white-walled courtyard in a minimal black ensemble and futuristic turquoise boots with high heels, Olsen is impressively assured. She speaks fluent English without hesitation in rapid-fire sentences – an accent that’s part Scandi New York part South London.

Sealed cardboard boxes with labels such as “YVES S LAURENT — CHLOE — LANVIN — GIVENCHY” and “BALENCIAGA” make up some of the collection, most of which Ousen was given by American cultural theorist and mentor Steven Marc Klein. He died last year at the age of 70. What makes the Klein Collection so special?

“Because promotional items are always disposable and disposable and only used for marketing and sales,” says Olsen. “These articles are not individually valuable, but taken together they are extremely valuable. . . For students, researchers, entrepreneurs. . . Anyone who wants to understand the history of fashion.

“I don’t think it’s ever been seen in this kind of territory before, because people in the intellectual discourse of fashion shy away from the publicity, the promotion.”

Klein’s massive gift in 2016 More was added as word spread. Olson shoved aside another neat box: “This is part of the donations we received from Comme des Garçons: emails, catalogs, lookbooks.

I was his student and he was my teacher and he was a monologue.

Klein – better known as Steve O’Klin – was a provocateur and cult figure on the American fashion scene. A former graphic designer and branding consultant, Klein is immersed outside of New York’s visual arts scene and particularly in fashion.

Under the pseudonym O’Klin (“His Trolling Man,” Olson approves), Klein took over Not Vogue, a satirical fashion blog full of the industry’s excesses. He was also an obsessive collector – even a borderline hoarder – of fashion.

Olson and Klein met when Klein saw press coverage of Olson’s self-published empire and contacted her by email in 2015, and “from that moment on, he threw me links — any references to culture, music, art, and it was like 20 links.” one day.”

“‘I’ve done my research, I’ve finished this material, and people need to have access to it,'” Klein finished handing the collection to her. “

Olson visited him regularly in New York and his absence was felt as the day of the library’s opening approached. “I was his student and he was my teacher and he was a monologue. I was taking notes and really listening to him. I had such respect for him.”

Now Olson is focused on continuing his career. Such as the library’s partnership with the museum, exhibitions, editorial works, symposiums and collaborations with leading fashion schools such as Central Saint Martins in London and Parsons School of Design in New York. Olsen would eventually like to establish a PhD research residency.

Her generation is often overlooked in print. Olson clearly loves it, but why? “He’s brave. It’s on newsstands and shouldn’t be ignored. It is more legitimate and this is an antidote to the media cycle online.

Can she do Anna Wintour’s job in 15 years?

“Umm…” There was an awkward pause before her reply.

“So I don’t believe in monthly magazines. We need to slow down. Printing 500,000 copies of an issue every month and sending it for international distribution etc. is not sustainable. Magazines need to be completely changed.

But commercial publishing is fun. It’s waning in sales and reach and influence—and that means it could have an amazing revival.

She then added: “But there’s definitely something about taking something that’s dying as a concept and doing it in a new way for a new audience.

“Like a Library”

International Fashion Research Library It opens in Oslo in October

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