Funny Fashion.

After the Second World War, many UK art schools adopted some of the Bauhaus’s pre-war themes and skills, that were still considered contemporary and provocative.

These included Areas and their Divisions; Planes; Contemporary and Harmonic Shapes; Colour; Analytical Drawing, Modelling and Carved Mass; and Space Penetration and Division, for example. Such programming would go on to underpin much of the radical artwork and thinking of the flourishing 1960’s and 1970’s art scene.

So, what are the radical perceptions and agendas for the future fashion designer that design schools are looking to instigate now? What type of cultural revisionist will their teaching produce, and who are the creative agitators and insurgents challenging and informing progressive curricula?

Answers will likely depend on what kind of questions colleges are asking, where they are asking them, to whom, and of course, why. But, the interesting answers will not come from asking industry. I would argue, that the answer isn’t the interesting bit anyway; the question is.

So, how do design colleges become better at asking questions?  And how do they get better at providing evolving and adaptable ‘recital’ spaces to foster messy yet relevant creative anarchists that will found futures rather than respond to them?

Well, an emphasis on fun is always a good place to start.