What is education in fashion? Reflecting on the coloniality of design techniques in the fashion design educational process

Abstract

Research in fashion to expose dominant Eurocentric narratives tends to focus on fashion theories and histories, neglecting fashion design processes, especially within studio-based practices and in education. However, analysing how colonial systems reproduce Eurocentric fashion knowledge in the fashion design process might help locate alternative heterogeneous ways to practise and teach fashion design. Drawing on Tlostanova’s coloniality of design concept, this article investigates how gendered, racialized and capitalist disciplinary forces have underpinned the tools and equipment used in the fashion classroom. To expose the racial hierarchies underpinning fashion requires rethinking some of the dominant assumptions of Eurocentric fashion epistemologies to contextualize the sociocultural contexts of fashion.