Breaking the Script - Fashion Critiques and Conversations Thoughts in Progress

The role of the fashion designer is broadening and shifting and in our academic, as well as our roles as creative practitioners, we feel a responsibility to develop new tools and resources for coming generations. A critical reflection on the fashion system – informed by a wide spectrum of roles and reaching from student to industry – is emerging in isolated pockets and on the fringes. We now need to nurture and connect these through the educational structures and institutions in which we work. From our conversations and critiques themes, challenges and mostly questions are emerging. We’ve identified that we miss fashion-owned language to describe the new paradigm as well as updates in fashion methodology. As educators we experience the disconnect between students’ expectations of their education/curriculum, the fashion industry and their future roles within it and the reality of the current fashion system. We encounter fear of owning up to responsibilities within fashion in general and in particular to one’s role and agency within and beyond the field and ultimately a lack of honest and potentially vulnerable critical debate. Together, we try to identify issues and opportunities of the fashion system and investigate ways to break the ‘script’ that we see embedded in fashion education.