The Transformative Power of Practice-based Fashion Research.

The advent of the twenty-first century ushered in a new generation of fashion
designers who merge design, artistic practice and research in a natural way. They
use artistic and activist interventions to revision fashion as a cultural and symbolic
value-adding component integral to post-industrial restructuring and repositioning
it as a much broader and more significant role than as an industry that makes and
sells apparel (Craik 2019: 133). This generation is not necessarily operating from
fashion capitals such as London or Paris, but quite often based in the outskirts of
the fashion areas (such as Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden or Austria). Being
aware of the social and environmental issues and the failures of the current fashion
system, they are fundamentally rethinking and redefining the fashion system by
implementing new values and new imaginations approaching fashion design as
an embodied practice and as an activist tool (Bourriaud 2009: 51–52; Teunissen
2005: 8–23; Teunissen 2014: 12–72). Based on the research for the exhibitions
The Future of Fashion in Now (2014) and State of Fashion (2018) – where I showcased these ground-breaking designers – I would like to draw and define this ‘new
hybrid designer’ and highlight how they as activists and practitioners effectively
contribute to some of the fundamental changes of the current fashion system
(Teunissen 2018).