At 22, Elise By Olsen has spent much of her life refusing to be ignored by what she calls the “legitimate” fashion world.
At eight, she started a style and culture blog; at 13, she became one of the world’s youngest editors-in-chief when she founded, published and edited Recens, a glossy style magazine for under-18s. (“It was unheard of that young people would take part in the cultural conversation or the fashion industry,” she says.) Later, she launched Wallet, a fashion industry journal with what WWD described as a “sharp, critical pen”.
The wunderkind from the Oslo suburbs has worked as a cultural and branding consultant and at 17 joined a creative residency at Google in Paris at the invitation of Hans Ulrich Obrist, the curator and art critic. Her early magazines were, she says, born of frustration: “People in fashion hold on to their positions, even though they might