A big part of the fashion industry works just fine, but what if you love fashion but don’t feel like you want to be part of this current sys- tem? What if you cannot find a place for your understanding of fashion within this industry? It’s important to start, from the very beginning, with an understanding of what your possibilities and responsibilities are. Basically, you cannot produce anything anymore without full awareness of the environmental, social and economical conditions that shape the fashion industry. It’s all part of the contemporary process of creating. Anything less would be plain ignorant.

In the fashion world, we’ve been talking for years about coming up with new ideas in this direction and making a difference, but we need these changes to take shape within the prac- tices in the fashion education system. It is up to the new generation to research and finetune their choices, look deeper into current options and develop forward-thinking models that put them at the forefront of a much needed new wave of fashion.

It’s easy to rant and be pessimistic about the fashion industry. Today, a large part of it is based on producing and consuming gigantic amounts of clothing. Collections are manufactured all over the world at dizzying speeds all year round and are sold for extremely low or very high prices. It is a fast-changing system that seems hard to break through. How do you, as a designer, deal with this system in an ever-changing world and come up with innovative ways of designing, producing, promoting, financing, selling and eventually consuming?

The two-year Fashion Matters master’s programme is a research-based course to find answers to these questions. The two-year programme leads students along the path from in depth research and experimentation to development and production.

Supported by G-Star RAW.

In collaboration with the Fashion Council NL and Meesteropleiding Coupeur Master in Craft.

Interview with Christophe Coppens by fashion journalist Georgette Koning.