State of Fashion 2022 | Ways of Caring

Ways of Caring: State of Fashion unveils theme for the 2022 edition and announces new open call

With Ways of Caring as the central theme of its next biennial, State of Fashion once again calls our attention to the challenges that fashion is facing today. For this second edition in 2022, the focus is on the need to restore broken threads and disrupted relationships in the fashion world. Traditionally, fashion is a networked system of relationships through which we communicate about who we are, how we feel, and how we relate to each other, to other animal species and to nature. Over time, the industrial fashion system, with growth and profit as its main objectives, has gained a dominant position and resulted in an industry that is caught up in a cycle of overproduction, feeding a culture of over consumption. To keep this system alive, people and animals are being exploited and suppressed, and nature is being poisoned.

In close collaboration with its curator-team, consisting of Fashion Open Studio and NOT____ENOUGH collective, State of Fashion wants to find alternatives for this system, which perpetuates inequality by choosing one specific perspective and interest over many others. There are countless ways of practicing fashion that are not yet recognized in the mainstream. How do we create space for different fashion systems to co-exist? What can we learn from these diverse fashion systems? And, how can we encourage the fashion world to rethink, revalue, reconnect and care?

During State of Fashion 2022 | Ways of Caring, everyone – from fashion designer to industry tycoon to textile worker and consumer – is invited to participate and to practice fashion in various meaningful ways. Part of the programme is a reflective and experiential exhibition, in which NOT____ENOUGH collective invites you to see differently what has been left out, suppressed or removed in fashion. In their words: ‘Only by recognizing and acknowledging what's missing, and understanding the consequences of these omissions, plural and unexpected forms of fashion can coexist’. In and around Arnhem’s high street, Fashion Open Studio hosts a programme of activities that reconnects fashion with people in a playful yet revolutionary way. ‘A society that cares is a society prepared for repairs,’ states the team. They invite everyone to take part in their interventions: from repairing clothing to redesigning dysfunctional systems together.

With Ways of Caring, the co-curators do not only chose a theme, but also a working method. Inspired by the original meaning of the word 'curator' – a derivative of the Latin cura, which means 'to take care of’ – they will develop the programme of the biennial by listening, creating space for new people, and by being open to new kinds of knowledge. The curator team invites the audience of State of Fashion to participate and think along with them.
One of the first steps in this process is an Open Call for Contributors. The curator team calls for fashion enthusiasts, creative and original contributors from all over the world to join them in co-creating an exhibition. Those interested can register as of today via: LINK.

State of Fashion 2022 | Ways of Caring opens on 3 June 2022 in various locations in Arnhem, the Netherlands. The full programme – developed in close collaboration with partners and the public – will be announced in the spring of 2022.

More information: stateoffashion.org

Fashion Open Studio is the showcasing initiative of Fashion Revolution, the world’s largest fashion activism movement, that campaigns worldwide for a clean, safe, fair, transparent and accountable fashion industry. Fashion Open Studio specifically works with designers, makers and other creatives to challenge the mainstream and champion the radicals. Curators from Fashion Open Studio for the State of Fashion biennial 2022 are Orsola De Castro, Filippo Ricci, Tamsin Blanchard and Niamh Tuft.

 NOT____ENOUGH collective consists of Andrea Chehade Barroux, Mari Cortez and Marina Sasseron de Oliveira Cabral, three South American women who graduated from ArtEZ and currently live in the Netherlands. With their work, they want to transform the dynamics of oppressors and oppressed imposed by inherited colonial structures. From a personal to a systemic sphere, they collectively exercise non-colonial practices. Their aim is to take up the challenge of forming a plural world together, and to initiate change within fashion, design and education.