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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