State of Fashion: This is an Intervention

State of Fashion, a platform originated to re-think the fashion system, has announced their activities program containing four interventions: Introspection, Origins, Transition and Release. 

At State of Fashion the current game-changing events in the world, Covid-19 and worldwide Black Lives Matter movement, made them reflect their message. So far, they addressed the ecological footprint of fashion production, the promises of new materials, and fairness related to labour and working conditions, to explore how to redefine the ethics and values of fashion. This framework was the focus of their previous curator José Teunissen, and the 2018 exhibition ‘Searching for the New Luxury’. The events of 2020 almost automatically led to the new, broader focus of de-colonialism, that until now has been largely overlooked.

This is An Intervention

In the coming months, they will host four interventions featuring controversial readings, online talks, interactive workshops, and inspiring videos, films and visuals about the fashion system, its flaws and its future. First, they take a critical look at the fashion system and our role in it during an intervention dubbed Introspection. In the second intervention themed Origins in November, we trace the roots of the system and highlight work of those unseen. In the new year, we search for ways to rebuild the system in the third intervention themed Transition. Finally, in parallel with the announcement of a new curator team for State of Fashion 2022, we look for ways forward, in the intervention themed Release.

Regenerative System
"Our current fashion system may be globalized, but right now there is just an ‘us’ and an 'other’. For decades, the system has been shaped by Western ideas of what fashion is, should be and should do. It encourages constant growth and renewal, failing to take into account what it is slowly erasing as a result. It excludes other values and cultures, even though they play a pivotal role in shaping a system that is restorative for both nature and culture. As long as this doesn’t change, it seems impossible to create change that has a significant positive impact on all of us."

Join the conversation
For each intervention, they invite thinkers and makers from different parts of the world to take over our platform. For the first intervention in October, they collaborate amongst others anthropologist Sandra Niessen (Research Collective for Decolonizing Fashion) and curator and writer Stephanie Afrifa for an introspection. This intervention dives into the question of what happens to designers, labels, producers, educators and others in fashion, when we revise the colonial values fashion is still largely based on?

Join the first conversation, on 28 October, in Whataboutery #1, the covid-proof online safe space for dangerous ideas.

Longread 'Regenerative Fashion: There can be no Other'
Strategies to revise fashion are based primarily on two issues: material and labour. As laudable and important as these efforts are, they are not sufficient to solve the crisis we are in.
Read 'Regenerative Fashion: There can be no Other'

Whataboutery #1
October 28th This ‘Whataboutery’ offers you the chance to listen to voices that are being systematically silenced and erased by the fashion industry and gives you the opportunity to enrich your perspective...
Find out more about Whataboutery #1

Content courtesy, and more information: www.stateoffashion.org