URL to IRL via WFH – @elisebyolsen and @elsehsth in Conversation with @p_e_c_o_m The co-founders of International Library of Fashion Research were in conversation with Marco Pecorari about their decision to open an international library, with an international audience and ambitions, outside of the big fashion metropolitans. Why Oslo? “I love the idea”, as chief executive of Comme des Garcons, Adrian Joffe, said in an interview with the New York Times about the brand’s decision to collaborate with the Library. “Fashion can no longer be centered in Paris, London, Milan, Tokyo and New York. It feels like such an old idea. I hope the next one [they do] is in Johannesburg or Lagos or Ulaanbaatar.” Limitations/possibilities of economy, health, the Internet, geographic positioning, etc. have forced people to go remote (again?). Thorenfeldt has a background as presse attaché for Martin Margiela in the 90s, a brand (at least then) deliberately disconnected from the centralized fashion apparatus. She then decided to move back home to her native Norway, off-the-grid, to start an organic farm on a rural island just south of Oslo. The fashion-farming parallel is strongly apparent in her practice. By Olsen, on the other side, created a global fashion thinking practice from her childhood bedroom at the age of 13 in the suburbs of Oslo via digital spaces. The two of them met online through their common network, and have since developed the Library almost exclusively via digital correspondence. “As long as you have wifi and an airport – we can work from anywhere”.