“It is your choice to listen to the teacher or the class clown.” When the press release for a graduate show gives students the freedom to ignore their tutors, you know you’ll be in for a treat. Doing Fashion, the course at the Institute of Fashion Design in Basel, gave us exactly that. Walking into the building, there was no catwalk. Instead, visitors found a maze of scaffolding and neon lights through which the diversely cast models would later run, skip and dance ‒ a nightmare for the photographers, who could be seen chasing models to get a shot, but so much fun for anyone watching! [...]
Priska Morger, artistic director of the BA and MA, explained the reasoning behind this particular focus on performance and communication: “I started my career at Raf Simons, and for him, it was never just about the clothes. He taught me that a vision should be expressed through every single part of the communication. That’s what I’m trying to give my students as well.” [...]
It goes to show that a teacher’s intent is nothing without a student’s lived experience. That is why, as part of a new series, we will be asking students and graduates to explain, analyze, comment and critique their school’s official communications. Having an extended school philosophy is great, but does it work in practice?
The Institute of Fashion-Design lives and teaches a holistic understanding of fashion.
“Another example is that we are not asked to define what we want to specialize in. You don’t have to check a box that says “menswear”, “womenswear” or “accessories”, our school is too small for that. You can make a menswear collection the first semester, then switch to womenswear, then do a mixed collection. It’s up to you!” ‒ Nina Britschgi
In our expanded understanding of a collection, the performative staging of fashion in space is considered just as much as the design of surfaces and forms as well as a pronounced understanding of images and visual communication.
“In a way we have to be creative directors who think of every aspect of the collection from the start, and every aspect should further the underlying understanding of fashion. I think our school realizes that, living in a country as small as Switzerland, where there isn’t much of a fashion industry, you need to either learn to do everything yourself and find creative ways to get things done or, after we’re done studying, you might want to go on to work in the field of fashion as something other than a clothing designer (prints, accessories, photography, styling etc).” ‒ Nina Britschgi
Doing Fashion encourages young talent to boldly break away from the conventional understanding of fashion, from its concepts of beauty and images of the body.
“We are certainly urged from the beginning of our studies to ask ourselves why we are interested in fashion, what exactly interests us about it, what we love and what we want to change. These are not questions of aesthetics primarily, it’s about politics, ethics, philosophy, society. It can be a bit frustrating too sometimes, because fashion is an industry, and there are always certain standards. For example, I created my thesis collection for petite women, but for the graduate show it was a bit hard to find really petite women among the models booked for the show, since they also had to walk for the other designers who presented their clothes.” ‒ Nina Britschgi