Fashion Research Symposium 2026: ​​The Body, Exhibited​

Program

10.00-10.15 Coffee

10.15-10.30 Welcome note & introduction by Hanne Eide & Elise By Olsen 

10.30-10.50 “Bodies as Tools and Trophies – In the Making of Norwegian Fashion History” – talk by Anne-Sofie Hjemdahl

What role did the body play in establishing fashion as a field of knowledge? The museum’s dressed bodies appear in the tension between the living and the stylized, the present and the seemingly absent, the individualized and the objectified. In this paper, I discuss the body’s function as both tool and trophy in the process of establishing fashion as a field of knowledge at the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Oslo in the first half of the twentieth century. As a tool, the body and its physical form were crucial for stabilizing garments as specific objects of knowledge. At the same time, these bodies assumed the role of social and cultural trophies by foregrounding bodies that were understood as status-bearing, “proper”, and important. It is within this tension between the body as tool and as trophy, and drawing on actor-network theory, that I investigate the museum’s labour on and with bodies.

Anne-Sofie Hjemdahl is an associate professor of cultural history and museology at the University of Oslo. In her PhD thesis in museology (2013), she examined how the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Oslo contributed to establishing fashion as a field of knowledge, a topic she continues to explore in her current research on bodies, dress, and museum practices.

10.50-11.10 “The Party: Exhibiting Unruly Fashion” – talk by Matthew Linde

Critiques of the fashion blockbuster often arrive with longueurs on the collusion between museums and markets. Rather than necromance these debates, this talk centers the practical methods and outcomes of his independent curatorial work. Moving from a Melbourne boutique to staging exhibitions in apartments, streets, and white cubes, Linde outlines a practice focused on experimental designers (both emergent and historical) to ask: how can display itself embody this work? Linde further examines how exigencies of site and budget produced ad hoc display strategies, which typically demand surrogate bodies or mannequins. Informed by proximate art practices like deskilling, assemblage, appropriation, and performance, these conditions forge techniques that fold the designers’ vanguard procedures directly into the display. Such methods often betray the canonical "ennobled object," upheaving fashion’s social, provisional, and performative qualities.

Matthew Linde is a New York–based fashion exhibition-maker, educator, and writer. He completed a PhD at RMIT University (School of Fashion & Textiles) in 2021 on contemporary methods for fashion curation and experimental fashion practice, and teaches in Parsons’ MFA Fashion Design and Society program. As an independent curator, he has organised 30+ exhibitions across biennales, museums, and galleries, including projects at Kunsthalle Bern, the 9th Berlin Biennale, the National Gallery of Victoria, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 80WSE, and Goethe-Institut Ludlow38. He founded and directed Centre for Style (Melbourne) from 2013–2016, and was the recipient of The Ian Potter Cultural Trust (Costume Institute mentorship, 2020), the Freedman Foundation International Scholarship for Curators (2019), and the Marion Fletcher Fashion & Textiles Scholarship (2014).

11.10-11.40 “Exhibiting the Body, from Maison Martin Margiela to the Museum” - Bob Verhelst in conversation with Else Skålvoll Thorenfeldt

Designer, museum scenographer and former Maison Martin Margiela insider Bob Verhelst offers a unique perspective on the central challenge of fashion exhibitions: managing the presence and the absence of the body. Drawing on his two decades of work with MoMu - Fashion Museum Antwerp, including the inaugural exhibition in 2002 "Selection I: Backstage” and the seminal “20th The exhibition: Maison Martin Margiela” in 2008, Verhelst explores how his scenographic choices bridge the living & moving body of fashion with the monumental body of the museum, and how he navigates the critical tension between curatorial distance and fashion house intimacy.

Bob Verhelst is a multifaceted designer with a remarkable portfolio spanning scenography for various museums like MoMu-Fashion Museum Antwerp, Musée des Arts Décoratifs and Palais Galliera in Paris and multiple collaborations with esteemed brands, like shows and exhibitions for Maison Martin Margiela, windows for Ann Demeulemeester, projects for Victor&Rolf and presentations for Hermès and Cartier. As a former guest lecturer at the Fashion Academy in The Hague and art director at Graanmarkt 13, Verhelst balances his work in visual arts with his passion for design. 

11.40-12.00 Coffee

12.00-12.20 “Dialogue on Measurement and Body Shapes in the 19th Century” – talk by Marlène Van de Casteele

This paper examines the patented inventions and theoretical speculations on the body developed by the tailor Alexis Lavigne (1812-1884). Founder of a tailoring house for men’s garments (1840) and, in 1841, of the eponymous cutting school that would later become ESMOD (the École Supérieure des arts et métiers de la mode), Lavigne is a key figure in the Nineteenth century history of technical development of standardized sizing, grading and cutting systems. Furthermore, his research on bodily conformations led him to innovate beyond tailoring practice, developing patents, methodologies and prototypes on dress-form mannequins: from the ‘buste mannequin moulé sur nature’ (1847) to the ‘Corbeille Parisiene’ (1860). In this talk, I show how Lavigne’s work on the body and the mannequin stands at a crossroads between an industrialization process and an emergent tendency to aesthetically display fashion in commercial spaces and exhibitions.

Marlène Van de Casteele is a postdoctoral researcher at ESMOD International where she is currently in charge of the Research Lab on heritage, archives and fashion studies. She holds a Ph.D in History of Contemporary Art at University Lumière of Lyon II. She has been collaborating with museums, acting as scientific curator for Printemps Haussmann exhibitions (2024-2026) and Palais Galliera, Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris (2020-2022), but also assistant curator for the exhibition Le Paris de la Modernité (1905-1925) at the Petit Palais, Musée des beaux-arts de la ville de Paris (2022-2023).

12.20-12.40 “Traces to Slavery: Through the Lens of Fashion Biographies” – talk by Lena van de Poel

Objects can serve as a tangible representation of complex concepts, such as the continuous nature of colonial history. Museum collections already hold the potential to tell these stories. The Centraal Museum in Utrecht (NL) has identified the collection’s traces to slavery in a large-scale database-research. A group of objects was distinguished with indirect traces to slavery: they were owned by people whose family used to own plantations or shares in plantations. Within this framework, the biography of these objects spans beyond their original use. Their histories reach back to the colonial power and wealth that shaped the families and continue into museum practice today. This simultaneously intertwines the biographies of both objects and people. In this presentation, Van de Poel argues that the objects with indirect traces to slavery offer museums a means to mobilize fashion to achieve visibility for the enduring character of colonial history. They can make the bodies and lives of these colonial histories tangible. The bodies of the wearers and the connected lives of their ancestors, who possessed money and power within the structures of slavery, as well as the living histories of those that that did not share in that wealth and power and are absent in the material collection of the Centraal Museum.

Lena van de Poel is a curator and researcher specializing in design and fashion. She holds an MA in Curating Art and Cultures (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam/University of

Amsterdam), and a BA in Art History (Utrecht University) with a minor in Fashion Studies (University of Amsterdam). Van de Poel worked as a curator in training in the fashion department of Centraal Museum (Utrecht, NL). She is currently Junior Curator at the National Museum of Glass (Leerdam, NL) and works as an independent researcher and curator, including for fashion heritage platform Modemuze.

12.40-13.00 “Anachronic Bodies” – talk by Judith Clark

The presentation will draw on Clark’s 30 years of fashion exhibition-making and in particular will look at the mannequin as an ongoing opportunity for collaborative practice. The mannequin bridges the time of the exhibition [the present] and the period associated with the original garment.

Judith Clark is Professor of Fashion and Museology at University of the Arts, London, is a curator and fashion exhibition-maker based in London. She has recently opened a studio space in Notting hill, to exhibit hypothetical exhibitions of dress in the form of 1:12 models. Clark opened the first experimental gallery of fashion in London (1997-2002). Since then Clark has curated major exhibitions of dress at the V&A, London; ModeMuseum, Antwerp; Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Palazzo Pitti, Florence; La Triennale, Milano, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Simone Handbag Museum, Seoul, and in 2012 installed Frida Kahlo’s dresses at her home in Mexico City. In 2015 she curated the inaugural exhibition at La Galerie, Louis Vuitton, in Asnieres. Her exhibition ‘The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined’ travelled from the Barbican to the Winter Palais in Vienna, and to ModeMuseum, Hasselt in September 2017. Her Femininities. Guy Bourdin opened at Maison Chloe in July 2017. In 2018 and 2019 she collaborated with the Museo Cristobal Balenciaga on the series ‘Cristobal Balenciaga: Fashion and Heritage’ and in 2019 opened Lanvin:130 in Shanghai. She twice curated the fashion section of Homo Faber projects in Venice (2018, 2022). In 2025 she opened If You Know You Know, Loro Piana’s Quest for Excellence at the Museum of Art Pudong in Shanghai. She is currently the show curator for Vogue World: Milano, to be staged in September 2026.

13.00-14.00 Lunch

14.00-14.30 “The Evolution of the Fashion Exhibition” – Harold Koda in Conversation with Elise By Olsen

A veteran of fashion exhibitions, Harold Koda sits down with Elise By Olsen to discuss his extensive career and fashion’s evolving relationship to the body. Looking back at his curatorial practice spanning more than fifty exhibitions from 1970 to 2020, Koda reflects on fashion’s shift from costume and dress toward a more visual and artistic discipline. Together, they explore the museological interpretation of fashion, changing modes of presentation, and the body’s role – whether as method, aesthetic subject, spectacle, or simply as a pivot point for the clothes.

Harold Koda, curator and author, is the former Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. There he directed an ambitious program of exhibitions and publications that extended the breadth of its audience and transformed the museological interpretation of fashion. Since 1980, he curated over 50 exhibitions primarily during his tenure at the Fashion Institute of Technology and The Costume Institute, but also at the Guggenheim Museum, The Bass Museum, and other smaller galleries. His exhibitions have been recognized by awards and citations from The Costume Society of America and the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art. He is the author and co-author of 20 books, and lectures widely. A sansei born in Honolulu, Koda has been honored with awards for his professional contributions and achievements in the worlds of fashion and museums from the Council of Fashion Designer’s of America, the Fashion Group International, Hofstra University, Pratt Institute, and Bard College among others. Harold Koda stood at the forefront of The Costume Institute’s renovation and reopening of Anna Wintour Costume Center in 2014, a state-of-the-art facility housing its costume collection and library. 

14.30-14.50 “Excerpts from the MAK Helmut Lang Archive” – talk by Marlies Wirth

This talk presents the curatorial framework of the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to Helmut Lang’s oeuvre titled HELMUT LANG. SÉANCE DE TRAVAIL 1986-2005. Excerpts from the MAK Helmut Lang Archive. Based on the largest and only official public archive dedicated to his legacy – donated to the MAK in 2011 – the exhibition provides unprecedented insight into Helmut Lang’s mindset. Focusing on the notion of the séance de travail as both working method and exhibition principle, the exhibition foregrounds process, narrative and spatial strategy along Lang’s principle that “everything has equal weight”. Conceived as a mixed media presentation featuring large-scale, site-specific installations, the show transcends the conventions of a classical fashion exhibition and repositions Helmut Lang’s fashion practice within a broader artistic and cultural discourse. The talk offers insight into the conceptual decisions behind the scenography, the importance of the body in motion and selected archive materials that reframe fashion as a critical cultural practice.

Marlies Wirth is a curator and art historian based in Vienna, specializing in contemporary cross-media practices. As Curator for Digital Culture and Head of the Design Collection at the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts her curatorial work critically engages with the transformations of the Anthropocene through the lens of art, design and architecture. Recent exhibitions include Helmut Lang. Séance de Travail 1986-2005, Felix Lenz.Soft Image, Brittle Grounds, Troika.Terminal Beach, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual and Invocation for Hope by Superflux. Through lectures, publications, and juries, she contributes to the international discourse on the cultural dimensions of technology and ecology.

14.50-15.05 “Please, Clean Up Honey!” – talk by Cecilie Skeide

In 2021, Lillehammer Art Museum presented the exhibition Please, Clean Up Honey! with Danish fashion designer Henrik Vibskov. With his conceptual performance-like fashion shows, experimental costumes for theater, ballet and opera, and spectacular installation exhibitions around the world, Vibskov has helped establish an alternative standpoint between fashion and other art forms. From this standpoint, he restlessly examines being human today. For what does it mean to be a human body in the world today? That was one of the questions curator and art historian Cecilie Skeide asked Vibskov in the exhibition work. Skeide will present the exhibition and highlight how they built expressions and themes together – all the while focusing on the body's movement and proximity to everyday life, real life and other people. This is the first time Lillehammer Kunstmuseum has presented an exhibition with a fashion designer.

Cecilie Skeide is a Norwegian art historian and works as a conservator/curator NMF at Lillehammer Art Museum. She has extensive experience as a curator, has created many exhibitions of both older and contemporary art and has written and contributed to several books on visual art. Skeide has been concerned with breaking down the distinctions between fine arts, crafts and design in the museum world.

15.05-15.25 Coffee

15.25-15.45 “State of Fashion Biennale - (In)-visible Body Contexts” – Anne Zhou & Shanu Walpita in Conversation

The 2026 State of Fashion curators unpack how the body shows up (or not) in an expansive biennale format that spans media, context and geography. Departing from a fixation on garments as objects of fascination, this year's edition titled Available to Promise focuses on the vast array of tangible and intangible elements that make up the fashion system. Their discussion will outline how their curatorial approach plays with what is seen and unseen - echoed in the spatial and visual direction of the exhibition and its wider ecosystem.

Anne Zhou is a London-based curator, educator, and maker. Her work investigates how curatorial practice operates as spatial and media environments that frame the relationship between bodies, objects, and systems. She is co-curator of the 2026 State of Fashion Biennale with Anouchka van Driel and Shanu Walpita, where the curatorial framework examines the infrastructures and forms of visibility that shape contemporary fashion. Anne has collaborated with institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum and teaches on the MA Design: Expanded Practice programme at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Shanu Walpita (she/her) is a curator, educator and foresight director. Her practice explores glitched, flattened and looped intersections of fashion, technology, culture and identity. She's currently co-curator of the 2026 State of Fashion Biennale, editor of the upcoming Softer Digital Futures Protocols publication and is also co-founder of 'Emergence of Tomorrow' - an innovative discussion space and community think tank. She previously held the position of Course Leader of BA (Hons) Creative Direction for Fashion at the London College of Fashion. There, she extended her expertise in speculation and cultural programming to conceptualize the curriculum, pedagogy and vision for this flagship course.

15.45-16.00 “Shaping Absence: The Body in the Fold” – talk by Anne Karine Thorbjørnsen

Anne Karine Thorbjørnsen’s talk will explore the fold as central to her practice—tracing the journey from sculpting on the body to shaping a body through the fold itself. As a fashion designer, the body was her canvas; now, as an artist, the body emerges more abstractly in her work. Yet it remains present—shaped by years of working directly with the body, and through her reflections on the human condition, our contradictions, and the tensions between inner experience and outward performance. Through the fold, she hopes to create resonance between work and viewer, inviting connection through what we recognize in each other.

Anne Karine Thorbjørnsen is an artist living and working in Elverum, Norway. She holds a BA and MA in Fashion Design from Central Saint Martins, London, and established her practice after graduating in 2012. In 2020, she transitioned from draping on the body to shaping the fold through sculpture, exploring drapery as both aesthetic form and philosophical concept. She has exhibited in Norway, with collections showcased in London, Paris, Stockholm, and Melbourne. Her works are held in the collection of the National Museum in Oslo.

16.00-16.30 “Iris van Herpen’s Posthuman Bodies” – talk by Anneke Smelik

The exhibition “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses” shows how the human body is deeply entangled with the wider material world of the non-human. Featuring a posthuman style of in-between-ness Dutch fashion designer Van Herpen dresses a body that is organically traversed by technology. Van Herpen’s designs create hybrid forms of the human body, merging with animals, trees or plants, wisps of smoke, magnets, sound waves, or dendrites and synapses. In this lecture Anneke Smelik discusses the way in which such a posthuman aesthetic can be understood with the dynamic concept of the ‘body-without-organs’ by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. It refers to a radical re-organization of the way in which the body is given meaning. The BwO potentially liberates the body from dominant modes of identity and instead gives it life in a play of change and metamorphosis.

Anneke Smelik is emerita Professor of Visual Culture and Fashion Studies at the Radboud University Nijmegen. She has published widely in the fields of fashion, cinema, popular culture and cultural memory. Her most recent book publications are the second and expanded edition of Thinking Through Fashion. A Guide to Key Theorists, with Agnès Rocamora; and The Four Elements of Fashion, with Alessandra Vaccari. She is co-editor of the journal Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty. She is currently writing a short monograph on Iris van Herpen for Anthem Press. 

16.30-17.00 Final remarks

17.00-18.00 “The Best Way to Wrap your Body in Paper” – performance by Vassilis Zidianakis at International Library of Fashion Research

In the context of Polyrhythmia in Paper, the current exhibition at International Library of Fashion Research, curator Vassilis Zidianakis will present a performative unfolding of the Issey Miyake paper garments currently on display, culminating in the live dressing of models and selected participants. Mediating bodies are central, as the exhibition explores the embodied archive, a concept brought into focus through this live encounter between paper, form, and body. Drinks will be served.

Vassilis Zidianakis is a curator of fashion exhibitions and modern art. He is the artistic director and co-founder of the cultural organisation ATOPOS cvc. His curatorial practice is idiosyncratic and based on his constant effort to interpret the Greek word “atopos”. He began his research focusing on clothing with an emphasis on the study and display of cutting-edge modern fashion. Then he turned to the embodied and narrational character of the racial and gendered body, the personal and collective trauma, memory, systems of embodied knowledge, as well as the relationship of the body with social justice and ecology. For ATOPOS cvc he created the #OccupyAtopos art project to support emerging artists, designers, curators, and thinkers such as Craig Green, Ren Hang, Eleni Riga and others. He has curated the exhibitions ARRRGH! Monsters in Fashion and RRRIPP! Paper Fashion at the Benaki Museum (Athens), Mudam Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Luxembourg), ModeMuseum – MoMu (Antwerp), La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris) and Centraal Museum (Utrecht). He has collaborated with director Robert Wilson and fashion designers Issey Miyake, Walter Van Beirendonck and Craig Green. He is a member of the ICOM Costume Committee, the scientific committee of the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (NMNM) and since 2006 he has participated in the selection of candidates for the Kyoto Prize Award in Arts and Philosophy of the Inamori Foundation in Japan. He studied Ethnology and Anthropology, as well as History of Civilizations at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris.