Education holds the potential to reinforce systems and to revolutionize them. Fashion education has served and fed the current global fashion system. It has also inspired and driven change in the global fashion system.
What kinds of fashion education are needed to build more inclusive, just and beneficial (fashion) systems? What kinds of fashion educational practices exist, can we share to learn from each other, and can we build together? How can we turn our reflections into actions?
The Multilogue on Fashion Education 2021 was a participatory and outcome-oriented space focused on the learning and teaching of fashion at tertiary level. It explored and illustrated the diversity and complexity of the field and the practices of fashion education. It aimed to foster a greater understanding of its pasts, presents and futures – methods, values and didactic, pedagogic and epistemological questions. This conference inspired mutual learning, collaborative research and shared action – fashion educations for NOW.
The Multilogue on Fashion Education 2021 featured: 32 Papers, 26 Workshops, 3 Provocations, a Conversation, a Student Think Tank and Exhibition, a live Podcasting Booth, a ollaboration with Granary 1, and the launch of FashionSEEDS.
This year’s rich and inspiring Provocations were presented by Christina Moon, Associate Professor Fashion Studies, Parsons School of Design, New York City (US); Yvonne Ntiamoah, Head of the Fashion and Design Department at Radford University, Accra (Ghana) and Zowie Broach, head of fashion at the Royal College of Art, London (UK).
‘The house of fashion education is constructed on a foundation of whiteness, thinness, able-bodiedness, and binaries. And simply welcoming in diversity and inclusion maintains this foundation that constructs the house.’ -Ben Barry
Social Justice within and through Fashion Education was the subject of this year’s Conversation, bringing together Ben Barry, Dean of the School of Fashion at The New School’s Parsons School of Design (US); Lesiba Mabitsela, artist/designer and fashion practitioner and co-founder of The African Fashion Research Institute (South Africa); and Tanveer Ahmed, Senior Lecturer for Fashion and Race at Central Saint Martins (UK).
The 26 Between workshops formed the heart of The Multilogue – opportunities for fashion educators and students from different subjects and institutions to meet, exchange experience, to learn from each other, develop ideas together and collaborate.
The virtual exhibition ‘Hoping & Doubting’ showcases projects that doubt and hope in/with/through fashion – projects of particular relevance to learning and teaching fashion NOW.
The Student Think Tank on ‘The Utopia of Fashion: Imagining the Future of Fashion Education’ was an interdisciplinary workshop for students from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and the American University of Paris (AUP) to rethink, reimagine and develop visions of learning and making fashion together.
The advisory board of the Fashion Education conference consists of professionals of renowned institutions from the United States, Austria and the United Kingdom.
Zowie Broach is Head of Programme for FASHION RCA. Since arriving in 2015 she has radically changed the paradigm of what it means today to consider how we might design in FASHION. Zowie previously co-founded the label BOUDICCA, the first independent British Label to show during Couture, Paris, as well as exhibit at and become part of the permanent collections in a number of international museums, such as Chicago Arts Institute and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Whilst at the RCA, FASHION has established a new series of platforms – Optimal Systems, Digital 360 and Bio as Design that expand the practice of Fashion. This is not exclusive of values, economy and philosophy of self; taking on board the myriad of potentials that need investigating to assure a practice that can reveal and express the question of identity for our future. Zowie Broach has been voted into the top 500 Fashion Leaders by Business of Fashion for the last 5 years and was a member of the British Fashion Trust jury in 2019.
Elke Gaugele is a professor for Fashion and Styles at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and head of the Austrian Center for Fashion Research (ACfFR). She is a cultural anthropologist, researcher, writer, and curator, her publications include Fashion and Postcolonial Critique (Sternberg 2019 ed. with Monica Titton); Dressing Dissent: Fashion as Politics, Special Issue Fashion Theory. The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, Vol. 24, 2019 (ed. with Monica Titton); Aesthetic Politics in Fashion (ed. Sternberg 2014).
Christina H. Moon is an Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons School of Design. Her research looks at the social ties and cultural encounters between design worlds and manufacturing landscapes across Asia and the Americas, exploring the memory, migration, and labor of cultural workers. Moon writes on fashion, design and labor, material culture, social memory, the ephemeral and everyday, and ways of knowing and representing in ethnographic practice. She is a fellow of the Social Science Research Council, Graduate Institute of Design, Ethnography, and Social Thought and India China Institute at The New School, and a member of the Fashion Praxis working group at Parsons. Her most recent book project is Ephemera, in collaboration with the photographer Lauren Lancaster, which traces fast-fashion across Los Angeles, Seoul, and New York. She is also the author of Labor and Creativity in New York's Global Fashion Industry and the co-edited volume, Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia.
Alistair O’Neill is a writer, curator and professor of Fashion History and Theory at Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London). He is a member of the Photography and the Archive research centre, sits on the editorial board of Fashion Theory and writes regularly for Aperture magazine. His research interests include twentieth-century and contemporary fashion; menswear; fashion photography in relation to visual culture; fashion curation and histories of display; and London as a centre for fashion cultures.
Credit: The Museum at FIT
Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she has personally organized more than 25 exhibitions since 1997. She is also founder and editor in chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, the first peer-reviewed, scholarly journal in Fashion Studies. As an author, curator, editor, educator and public intellectual, Valerie Steele has been instrumental in creating the modern field of fashion studies and in raising awareness of the cultural significance of fashion.
Professor Dilys Williams FRSA is the founder and Director of Centre for Sustainable Fashion, a University of the Arts London Research Centre, based at the London College of Fashion. Dilys’ work explores fashion’s relational ecological, social, economic and cultural elements to contribute to sustainability in and through its artistic, business and educational practices. Trained at Manchester Metropolitan University and holding a UAL professorship in Fashion Design for Sustainability, Dilys publishes widely on fashion and sustainability in peer-reviewed academic journals and published books. Dilys’ work draws on extensive experience in lead womenswear designer roles for international collections, including at Katharine Hamnett, Liberty and Whistles. This industry experience is complemented by a longstanding internationally recognized teaching and research portfolio centered on the development of sustainability centered design practices, based on principles of holism, participation and transformation design. She is a member of the UNFCCC Global Climate Action in Fashion and sits on advisory committees for Positive Luxury and the Global Fashion Agenda. Her place on the Evening Standard London’s Progress 1000 list in 2015, 2016 and 2017 evidences the public and academic influence of her work alongside regular appearances on broadcast television, radio and magazines including recent appearances on BBC World, Sky News, Radio 4, WWD, the Gentlewoman, Vogue and Elle magazine.
Prof Dr Renate Stauss (Fashion Studies, Department of Global Communications, The American University of Paris, France)
rstaussaup.edu
Dr. Renate Stauss is assistant professor of Fashion Studies at The American University of Paris in the Department of Global Communications. She is also an associate lecturer at the Berlin University of the Arts. Renate has been teaching cultural and critical studies in fashion in London and Berlin since 2003, working as a lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, Goldsmiths College and Esmod. She was part of the faculty at the Royal College of Art in London in the Department of Critical Studies for ten years.
Following her studies in fashion communication (BA, Central Saint Martins College, London) and communication, culture and society (MA, Goldsmiths College), she completed her PhD on Dress as Therapy: Working with Dress on the Self in Therapeutic Settings (University of the Arts London). The focus of her teaching and scholarship lies on the sociology and politics of fashion and dress, including the following subjects: relationships between dress and identity, fashion under socialism, the emotional and sensory impact of dress, fashion for a sustainable world. Renate has published in the area of fashion studies, fashion theory and pedagogy. Current research interests include fashion and politics, the perception and potential of fashion, the emergence of fashion theory, and fashion education – how we learn and teach fashion.
Publications & Reviews:
Talks, Workshops, Curation & Jury memberships
Prof Franziska Schreiber (Fashion Design, Institute of Experimental Fashion & Textiles Design, Berlin University of the Arts)
schreiberudk-berlin.de
Franziska Schreiber currently holds a visiting professorship at the Berlin University of Arts Berlin. She has been working as a lecturer in fashion design in Berlin and Hannover for fifteen years at the Berlin University of Arts, University of Applied Sciences Hannover, AMD Berlin amongst others. Following her studies in fashion design at the University of Applied Science Berlin (HTW) she founded the design collective „Pulver“ which successfully led the young German design scene in the first decade of the new millennium. Since then Franziska Schreiber has been working internationally as freelance consultant, designer and model maker for Stephan Schneider Antwerp, Costume National Milan, Reality Studio Berlin / Porto and Liebeskind Berlin amongst others. She is also an art director for static and performative fashion presentations, specializing in both concept and production of various show formats. In 2011 she was responsible for the concept development and curation of the Humanity in Fashion Award by Hess Natur, which she ran for a number of years. Current research interests include fashion education: how we learn and teach fashion, where she has also published.