fashioning education is a collaborative research initiative to open, facilitate and formalise the debate on fashion education against the backdrop of global social transformations.

It brings together experts and creatives from different fields of fashion related education, research and practice into critical conversation and exploration of the transformative potential of fashion education.

In the modernist logic of the global west fashion was constructed as the favorite child of capitalism. Fashion was defined as essentially transient, modern, urban – thus western. Fashion Education has fed a system based on this narrative. Ever faster. Ever more. One of the fastest growing educational sectors. To contribute to regenerative formation, fashion education has to become unfashionable. It has to disrupt itself, to re-configure itself – to be disruptive.

“Transformation through fashion education? Towards Systemic Change”

project presentations by

Laya Chirravuru (India): Roots Studio
Lesiba Mabitsela (South Africa): The Cutting Room Project
Stephanie Barker-Fry(UK): ReGo

and long table contributions by

fashion students Timisola Shasanya (CSM, UK) & Melchior Rasch (UdK, Germany)
and members of fashioning education
Dilys Williams (CSF, UK),
Oliver Ibert (IRS, Germany),
Tanveer Ahmed (CSM, UK) et.al.

With its second public event fashioning education continued to explore the transformative potentials of different fashion educational settings. It debated the extent to which fashion education can contribute to regeneration – from within. It invited opposing positions to a long table discussion supplemented by showcases of social fashion educational projects dedicated to new ecologies of community based on principles of collectivity, collaboration and care – proposing transformative tactics.



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What can fashion education do?

With its first public event fashioning education explored the potentials of fashion education beyond the tertiary level. Against the backdrop of some of the fundamental shifts and challenges in fashion education “The End of Fashion Education? Towards New Beginnings” acknowledged the need for reform and re-orientation in the way fashion is learnt and taught. It invited different perspectives on the positive educational impact: more humane, more social and more collaborative/collective. Nadine Gonzalez of CASA 93 (Paris, France), Mikele Goitom & Arabella Stewart of ARAKELE (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) and Kim Hou of ABOUT A WORKER (Paris, France) shared their respective works framed by an introduction of Franziska Schreiber & Renate Stauss of FASHION IS A GREAT TEACHER (Berlin, Germany).

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