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In this episode, I’m joined by Ingeborg Harms, one of Germany’s leading fashion writers, cultural critics, and thinkers, for a conversation about Jil Sander; her personality, her vision, and the ideas that continue to make her work so relevant today.

Our conversation grew out of Jil Sander by Jil Sander, the 2024 book created by Jil Sander in close collaboration with its author, Ingeborg Harms, and book designer Irma Boom. Harms has worked closely with Sander over several decades, including on the Präsens exhibition book, giving her a rare and intimate perspective on both the designer and the world she created.

We talk about Sander’s uncompromising pursuit of perfection, her relationship to modernity and craftsmanship, her understanding of individualism and identity, and her constant desire to imagine what comes next rather than repeat what has already been done. Harms also reflects on the contrast between Sander’s public image and private person behind it.

The conversation also turns to fashion journalism itself: how Harms approaches a subject, what it means to look beneath the surface of fashion, and how fashion can be understood through art, architecture, literature, history, materials, technology, and society.

Harms has spent decades writing about fashion and culture for publications including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Vogue, Self Service, and System Magazine. She was part of the founding team of Vanity Fair Germany and is today Professor of Design Theory at Berlin’s Universität der Künste.

Harms first encountered Sander at sixteen, when she visited her first store in Hamburg in the early 1970s. Decades later, that encounter became a close professional relationship and a series of collaborations. Her perspective offers a rare glimpse into one of fashion’s most private and visionary figures.

The Fashion Archivist Podcast, hosted by Freya Roski, explores fashion through research, conversation, and archival material. Each episode combines interviews, monologues, and deep dives with previously unseen or unheard material to examine how fashion knowledge is formed, shared, and interpreted today.

The series looks at the people, ideas, and systems that shape contemporary fashion across design, media, retail, image-making, and culture.

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Become a Substack subscriber: https://thefashionarchivist.substack.com/

About the podcast: www.roskiyard.com/fashion-archivist

Send us questions and requests at info@roskiyard.com

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In today's episode, I'm joined by Sigrid Ivo, curator of the Ivo Collection, one of the world's most significant collections of bags. Spanning more than 500 years of history, it includes over 5,000 pieces and began in 1996 as a small museum in her parents' home. A decade later, it had grown into the Tassenmuseum Hendrikje, the Museum of Bags and Purses in Amsterdam.

We talk about how her parents' passion for collecting evolved from a museum in their family home into a world-renowned institution. Sigrid shares the remarkable story of how the owner of a Dutch supermarket empire discovered their collection and helped make their dream even bigger by buying them a historic canal house in the heart of Amsterdam.

Sigrid also explains how she acquires rare and historically important bags, shares some of the collection's most extraordinary pieces, and reveals which eras of handbag design deserve more attention from collectors and enthusiasts alike.

The Fashion Archivist Podcast, hosted by Freya Roski, explores fashion through research, conversation, and archival material. Each episode combines interviews, monologues, and deep dives with previously unseen or unheard material to examine how fashion knowledge is formed, shared, and interpreted today.

The series looks at the people, ideas, and systems that shape contemporary fashion across design, media, retail, image-making, and culture.

Follow us on Instagram: @roskiyard

Become a Substack subscriber: https://thefashionarchivist.substack.com/

About the podcast: www.roskiyard.com/fashion-archivist

Send us questions and requests at info@roskiyard.com

Send us Fan Mail

Archive Notes is a series of short editorial episodes that accompany our long-form conversations, bringing together observations, research, and reflections.

In this first edition, Freya Roski reflects on the curiosity that led to The Fashion Archivist. From a lifelong habit of collecting and sourcing to recording voice memos whenever she encountered an intriguing designer, garment, or fashion reference, she shares the research practices that shaped the podcast.

The episode explores why conversations with the people who have shaped fashion are essential to understanding its past, and why archives remain vital to imagining its future. Along the way, Freya reflects on the collectors and designers who continue to inspire her, including Azzedine Alaïa, whose lifelong commitment to collecting and preserving fashion remains a guiding reference.

The Fashion Archivist explores fashion through conversations, Archive Notes, and archival thinking. The series examines the people, ideas, objects, and systems that continue to shape fashion across design, media, retail, image-making, and culture.

Follow us on Instagram: @roskiyard

Become a Substack subscriber: https://thefashionarchivist.substack.com/

About the podcast: www.roskiyard.com/fashion-archivist

Send us questions and requests at info@roskiyard.com