Fashion Colloquium: Searching for the New Luxury?

During the ‘Fashion Colloquium: Searching for the New Luxury’ we actively engage in in-depth conversations and explorations on the role of fashion in urgent socio-cultural, environmental and economic developments in contemporary society. Fashion is in dire need of more value-based critical thinking as well as design-driven research to thoroughly explore, disrupt, redefine and transform the system. How can we activate the power of fashion – highlighting the role of design, imagination and aesthetics – to act differently and to move towards more resilient futures and equitable societies? How can we envision and create an alternative and more engaged future of fashion that does more justice to fashion’s human dimension? How can academic research, critical thinking and creative interventions help to (re)imagine and build another kind of future where ‘fashioned’ human beings and materials have more agency?

At this two-day conference, we collectively investigate how fashion can serve as a tool for creating societal transformation in itself. We will deeply analyze and critically reflect on the cracks in the system, while simultaneously developing affirmative, alternative approaches. Together, we will share visions and offer concrete suggestions on how to re-engage with the practice of making fashion, with our material resources and how to revalue fashion’s human dimension, aiming to transform the often dehumanized production of fashion. This starts with fundamentally rethinking and redefining the value systems from which we live and work, and engage with each other and with the material objects that surround our bodies. We are proud and excited to host more than 40 experts who will present their academic research, visions, designs, concepts, future scenarios and new materials, offering a deeper insight into alternative approaches to the pressing issues in the fashion system today. We believe that research-through-design and research through artistic and creative practices leads to new insights, thought-provoking questions and radical imaginations regarding urgent challenges in fashion and society.

The ‘Fashion Colloquium: Searching for the New Luxury’ starts from cooperative thinking to build ecosystems of people from diverse backgrounds who want to share expertise, and genuinely commit to contribute to realizing our shared visions. We will build upon existing networks and expertise and develop new ones, to nurture long term and durable relationships to think, research, make and act cooperatively.

The Fashion Colloquium: Searching for the New Luxury, organized by ArtEZ University of the Arts in collaboration with State of Fashion, took place on 31 May and 1 June, 2018 in Musis Sacrum in Arnhem, the Netherlands.