TOPICS: FASHION COMMUNICATION FOR SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION in Spring 2024 (CM5091D)

Focusing on critical practice, this class is for students interested in fashion communication and advocacy. Students will learn how to analyse digital and analogue communication strategies and projects to further social, economic and climate justice, diversity, inclusivity, and equality within the fashion industry and society. Using the connective and creative potential of textile practices, dress and fashion, participants will move beyond the purely commercial dimensions of fashion to address notions of politics, power, resistance, and agency. They will explore different roles of citizen, activist, change agent – beyond the fashion marketeer and promoter.

This class proposes three learning formats:

1. Learning by reading & discussing key scholars’ texts and researching & analysing existing communication practices within the field of fashion;

2. Learning by making: Hands-on workshops with intermediaries of the professional field of fashion that will develop a project with the class (e.g. a communication campaign for the cause of unpaid workers in the fashion industry, or of the lack of diversity in the luxury sector…);

3. Service-learning: in collaboration with organizations, businesses, designers, or other intermediaries in the professional field of fashion. Apart from studying and developing communication strategies in different media and for different causes, the class will engage in a group service-learning project in collaboration with an organisation, business, or intermediary in the professional field of fashion.