Dear Shaded Viewers & Diane,
Under the missionary name: STATE OF FASHION, Arnhem’s former Fashion Biennale returns as a new organization and to stay, starting in June 1st 2018 with a three month program presenting itself under the slogan ‘searching for the new luxury’.
The program includes sales activities, workshops, future scenarios, laboratories for research, experimental playgrounds for its triggered public, etc, etc. But mainly, orientated for those students and progressive thinkers wanting to take care of the environment and who believe in one circular economy.
The temporary-frozen and now upgraded creative platform chooses to start full engine and put the fashion industry into the global struggle of sustainability; by questioning and challenging designers and all relations to respect the planet. Obligatory will be to deliver the invisible beauty sustainable fashion still needs to share, in order to educate all consumers and make them choice-aware before they click ‘buy’.
An intrinsic theme as its director and last speaker Ms.Christine de Baan positively pronounced at the local museum of art last Saturday during the soft event launch: ‘it will be a hard road to teach our society how to consume the magic of fashion under a sustainable frame, with the first edition we won’t have it solved; but we will surely make it’ she added.
The inevitable equation on linking Paris, London or even Dubai while searching for the new luxury is miles away from Arnhem’s healthy assignment. It’s far more opaque; but not less ambitious. It’s not about yachts, watches or expensive couture gowns either (except Iris van Herpen’s); it brilliantly refers to turn us all into conscious consumers – the most expensive from all the luxuries.
A controversial mission for a country where children wear five-pockets jeans and printed t-shirts at primary school with recognizable logos, expensive sneakers; going more for a collective branding experience and not exactly for the intentions behind the garments they get to buy. Shameless enough, weekly visits to chain store Primark, H&M or Zara (they generously cover the country on its four cardinal directions); are part of the basic groceries within a standard family. I seriously wonder: will school uniforms return after STATE OF FASHION 2018 first edition? I do hope the event will climb into political spheres to achieve that.
ArtEZ University of the Arts fashion department, with more than six decades delivering high education and international talents; remains the main organ behind the STATE OF FASHION. In collaboration with other partners (Sonsbeek), sponsors and municipal funds; is its recognizable lector and pedigree curator Ms.José Teunissen who will assure to bridge all fashion’s best and most at once.
A prestige, that has afforded the entire Arnhem’s family the challenge of writing a new fashion testament; with its export possibilities for 2018 already seen as a success.
NO WASTE = THE NEW LUXURY
FAIRNESS = THE NEW LUXURY
REUSE = THE NEW LUXURY
TECH = THE NEW LUXURY
SLOW = THE NEW LUXURY
ESSENTIAL = THE NEW LUXURY
AGENCY = THE NEW LUXURY
IMAGINATION = THE NEW LUXURY
Photos: © Eva Broekema.
Best,
MHM.
