New Fashion For Good exhibition centres work by students and emerging designers

The Fashion For Good Museum in Amsterdam has opened a new exhibition featuring Dutch fashion students and emerging designers.

The exhibition, entitled ‘News from the Future’ showcases different answers to the question: ‘what could the future of fashion look like?’.

Dutch fashion students from institutions across the Netherlands, including the University of the Arts Utrecht, Zadkine MBO, MBO Rijnland and Saxion College were invited to reflect on this question and similar questions as the industry faces the mounting challenges of post-consumer waste, overconsumption, pollution of the waterways, and increasingly unstable weather conditions.

At Fashion for Good’s new exposition, each of the young designer’s vision of ‘what the future of fashion could look like’ comes to life through garments, videos, installations and more.

‘Classroom of the future: the stories behind cotton’

Fashion students from across the country also participated in the educational programme ‘Classroom of the future: the stories behind cotton’. It was developed by the curator of the Fashion For Good Museum, education coordinator Alyxandra Westwood and education and fashion consultant in sustainability Yophi Ignacia, in collaboration with the schools mentioned above.

Fashion for Good and the partner institutions in the project made a selection of designs by the students who participated in this programme, which formed a part of and was based on the museum’s previous exhibition ‘Knowing cotton otherwise’.

The aim of this programme was to “challenge the segregated Dutch education system” ,“levelling the field between vocational education students and higher vocational education students” by having them work together side by side.

‘Classroom of the future: the stories behind cotton’ is available for download as “an open source toolkit for students in vocational education, [known as MBO in the Netherlands], and higher vocational education[, known as HBO] from the museum website and “consists of a set of six lessons all exploring the various aspects of cotton with specific emphasis on people and the planet,”the press release about the new exhibition reads.

Through the educational programme, its curators show the perspective of local and international creators and innovators working towards a better and fairer fashion system through the use of a variety of interactive educational tools such as videos, podcasts and workshops.

The exhibition ‘News from the Future’ places a clear emphasis on emerging fashion talent. The “look and feel” of News from the Future has been designed by upcoming graphic designer Sara Biatchinyi, as per the press release.

As another example of facilitating the connection of emerging fashion talent, Fashion For Good invited interdisciplinary jewellery platform and magazine Current Obsession to co-curate an installation that aims to address the “sustainable and regenerative design practices in both the fashion and jewellery industries,” as stated in the release.

Apart from the jewellery installation, which will be updated weekly, the exhibition will also highlight emerging talent through an art auction and a panel discussion on the future of jewellery.

In addition, designer Kevin Paraiso is showcasing a creative workshop at the Fashion for Good Museum featuring looks from his future-forward and sustainable ‘Cosmic Summer Dolkrey’ collection. The collection, which Paraiso presented at Paris Fashion Week SS23, uses vibrant colours with the aim of uplifting the fashion of today and tomorrow.

News from the Future at Amsterdam’s Fashion For Good is open to the public since Saturday, October 27 2023.