fashion
graduating option fashion
3+1 years
English master
read more about the programme
The artistic potential of fashion
Everyone comes into contact with fashion. Fashion is a multifaceted and fraught concept. By definition, it is hyper topical and at the same time as old as dressed man himself. Fashion is reviled as being a fickle system and frivolous consumer good, but also glorified as the ultimate means of expression. A narrow definition or perception of fashion as 'clothing' or a 'commercial system' detracts from the complex dynamics that characterise it and its enormous artistic potential. Fashion is eminently ambivalent and multidisciplinary. It is precisely from all these fields of tension that it draws its unique expressiveness.
A multifaceted artistic practice
Very deliberately, the course at KASK & Conservatorium chooses to approach fashion as a multifaceted artistic practice. The aim is not to train you as a designer 'in the service of' an existing system, but to challenge and invite you to develop your own and idiosyncratic artistic practice, in which the boundaries of the medium are constantly explored, questioned and above all pushed. More important than following the well-trodden path of fashion, are your individual participation and a thoroughgoing commitment to that practice.
Creative process and output equally important
At the heart of the programme are the workshops. Throughout the bachelors, in various projects you investigate your relationship to the medium, to society, its urgencies and challenges, the broad context, the professional field and finally to yourself as a visual artist. In the master, you forge all this into a coherent whole and arrive at your own unique signature, which you show in your master's thesis. Because every artist or designer also inevitably relies on craftsmanship, you will be taught its fundamentals in a number of separate courses. Depending on the needs of your own practice, you can then deepen these. In various general and specific theory subjects, you will build a strong frame of reference and sharpen your critical eye. Through internships, you get to know the professional field and decide how to position yourself in it.
Personal experimentation, thinking-through-doing, in-depth research, reflection and a continuous, intensive dialogue with lecturers form the basic approach to supervision. Here, the process is at least as important as the output and the latter can even deviate far from the traditional fashionable.
teachers
study programme
If you want to apply for an academic bachelor's degree, you must first pass an artistic admission test. To enter the master's programme, you will take part in an orientation test. These are organised several times per academic year.
credits
- video: Charles Dhondt, Hannah Bailliu, Manon De Sutter, Louisiana Mees
- Graduation 2023, photo: Cheyenne Dekeyser
- Tobias Van Nieuwenhove, Graduation 2023, photo: Giada Cicchetti