NL
Minor What Is Fashion?The minor

Minor What Is Fashion?

About the minor

Mode of study
Full-time
School
Design
Duration
5 months
ECTS
30,0
Type
Minor
Language
Dutch
Email
sz@hku.nl
Phone
+31 (0)30-2091540

Minor 'What is Fashion?' in short

  • You work on a visual research and design project.
  • Inspired by fashion strategies, you visualise what you see, think and feel.
  • You work from an open view, curiosity, and and interest in the unknown and unexpected.
  • You work in a studio and gain access to all our technical knowledge and skills.
  • This minor is offered in semester 1 (1 September 2024 – 1 February 2025.
THIS MINOR IS FULL!

About this minor

A furniture-covering tufted tapestry. Virtually animated outfits made of moss A textile ecosphere. Melting necklines. Fabrics dyed with bacteria. A menswear collection based on folds and skin. A painting you can wear as trousers... What is fashion?

In this minor, you will go through your own visual design track. ‘Practice-based’ working is central here: you think by doing and investigate through creation. This leads you to reflection, experiences, fashion, and materials—without a predetermined plan. Inspired by fashion strategies, you will visualise what you see, think, feel, or wish to explore, and tell an expressive story to an audience.

You can conclude this minor with a collection, an installation, a video, a series of visual interventions in public spaces, a series of photographic algorithms—wherever you arrive at.

In this minor, you study together with students from a mix of academic backgrounds. You are invited to explore and expand your own design strategies through exchange with other disciplines. Some might have experience with fashion, others with spatial design, audiovisual work, or graphic design. Common to all is experience and an affinity with the visual exploration of materials, forms, bodies, and movement. To avoid misunderstandings: this model is not simply a sewing course.

Minor What Is Fashion?What you'll be learning
Minor What Is Fashion?

What you'll be learning

Structure of the course

  • In the first three weeks, you get acquainted with the other group members, slow down your thinking and develop a colletive perception and creative approach, by working from a design philosophy. You also start creating directly by working from the senses and from a fashion-approach. We conclude the first weeks with a ‘fashion dinner’ at a special location where everyone shows what they have made.

  • Next, you enter into your own design and research track. You work in weekly meetings with your mentor group, where you share your process and make it visible. You are also guided in how to keep track and design the documentation of your process. You work independently in the studio, where you receive both solicited and unsolicited advice from the design teachers.

    We start each week with a collective exploration session in Fashion by examining and listening to specific fashion practices. This could be a lecture or a workshop, where you further learn what fashion design can entail and how to conduct ‘design research’. Topics may include fashion and ecology, fashion and materiality, bio fashion design, speculative (fashion) design, fashion and virtual realities, performative textiles, tailoring and Clo3D, and expanded fashion.

    Once every five weeks, you present your work during a ‘market’, where you get feedback from teachers, fellow students, alumni and fellow designers on the question: is my work doing currently what I hope it does?
  • In the last weeks, you go through a design transition by creating an experience for an audience with your work. You conclude the minor by presenting your work at a location outside of HKU. For this, you investigate means of displaying your work. Together with your fellow students, you are also responsible for production and all practical aspects of organising an exhibition – from communication, social media and pr, to transport and designing the routing.

Learning goals

  1. Gaining the imagination to make your work expressive.
  2. Independently establish a design or research track in the context of fashion and set up a presentation within the productional framework.
  3. Integrate previously gained knowledge, skills and attitude in your personal project.
  4. Shape your fascination within the design process independently.
  5. Organise meetings than can help you realise your (research) project.
  6. Reflect on your process and adjust course if necessary.
  7. Ability to communicate about your choices.
  8. Demonstrate the meaning of your project for your position in your field of work and sector.

Conclusion and assessment criteria

You conclude the minor by submitting a process documentation, exposing your work at an exhibition to an audience, and a final interview. The minor is evaluated with a whole or half grade. This grade is determined after your final interview and is formed by the average of the grade for your process and your work.

The work:

- Demonstrates expressiveness and individuality
- Is effective in the context of an exhibition to an audience.


The process:
  1. You do research by developing visual materials, conducting design iterations and involving unexpected elements in your research. Founded on this research, you get towards a visual work.
  2. You develop work with a critical awareness about the functioning of the design.
  3. You have familiarised yourself with fashion strategies and thereby enhanced your design skills.
  4. You can present and substantiate how the design process and the project have proceeded and how you have come your choices of execution and methods.
  5. You show control over your process and the creation of the work.
  6. You have searched multiple connections, perspectives and expertise and applied these insights during the further development of the work.
  7. You handle the roles and responsibilities for the creation of the exposition in a professional, flexible and respectful manner and know how to apply the productional framework (planning, communication, budget, logistics, presentation)
  8. You demonstrate the development of a personal vision on a field of work and can explain it.
Minor What Is Fashion?Enrolment and admission
Minor What Is Fashion?

Enrolment and admission

This minor is full. Enrolment is no longer possible!

For whom?

What is Fashion? is aimed at (Dutch-speaking) students of various art and design courses from institutions in both the Netherlands and abroad.

Admission requirements

We have a limited capacity for this minor and work with a matching. We ask a collection of examples of your work and a motivational letter. Selection is based on the insight into the development of your creative and reflective qualities. You are eager to get to work in the context of fashion and work visually. The skill level of this minor is that of a higher vocational (hbo) bachelor at year 3 or 4.

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This minor is full. Registrering is no longer possible!

Are you as student of HKU? Read how to apply on the student portal.

Are you studying at another institute? Application is done via Kies op Maat.

Not an HKU student?
Students from other academies are selected on the basis of a CV, study progress overview, portfolio and a 1-page motivational letter.

Studying at HKU?
Depending on which school you are studying, you might need permission from the Board of Examiners. Please see the student portal to see if this applies to your case.

This minor is full. Registering is no longer possible!
There’s a continuous selection that ends at the start of June.

Would you like to know more?

Please see our frequently asked questions first. Can’t find the answer you need? You can contact the Service Desk Student Affairs. They can help you with questions about (nearly) everything related to studying at HKU.

Contact

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