April 15, 2026 |
There’s no shortage of creative talent spilling out of fashion studios around the world. Most of it comes from a handful of fashion schools whose professors and practitioners are responsible for hand-picking and nurturing the graduates who will help to shape an industry equipped for an increasingly uncertain future. It’s challenging. The professors we talked to for this feature – from Antwerp to Johannesburg – share similar concerns, such as fashion degrees not being sufficiently funded or taken seriously, despite the industry’s importance both culturally and economically. They worry about students losing the ability to touch, in a literal sense, having information overload and not having spaces to express their creativity after they graduate. And there is also the issue of finance.
A master’s in London costs between £30-40,000 per year once you factor in the fees, living costs and materials. That’s why the Royal College of Art introduced a one-year master’s course in 2023. Some academic institutions in Europe are more accessible. The University of Vienna, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and the Berlin University of Applied Sciences, aka HTW (Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft), are all free or you’ll pay minimal fees to attend, with extraordinary educators and practitioners at the helm. Imagine! At HTW, you could be taught by Professor Hussein Chalayan. At the University of Vienna, Prof Craig Green will be guiding you through your fashion design tutorials.
“My area of specialty is innovation, sustainability and cultural identity,” says Chalayan, who has been at HTW Berlin since 2019 teaching across its BA and MA courses. “Right now, there are great state universities in Europe,” he says. “Lots of students who don’t have money deserve a place but can’t afford to study. The best art, music and fashion never came from money.” In London, the course leader for MA Fashion at Central Saint Martins, Fabio Piras, says: “The struggle is part of artistic practice.” But he questions why the industry isn’t more supportive of the education of the talent it ultimately benefits from. CSM’s MA course currently has just five scholarships, down from 12 pre-Covid.
As an academic myself, responsible for the BA Fashion Communication Journalism pathway at Central Saint Martins, I can vouch for the fact that working in creative education is an education in itself. Despite the 16 years that Liliana Sanguino, of the Parsons School of Design, has spent at the forefront of fashion education, she is still learning. As a Colombian who has built a career in London and now New York, and who collaborates with Indigenous trans communities in Colombia, she says she needs “a definition of fashion that is wide enough to hold all these worlds. I encourage students to do the same: to question, to expand and to define fashion through their own perspective, culture and lived experience. Without that, creative education risks producing designers who can replicate existing systems but not imagine new ones.” Here, Liliana Sanguino, who’s an educator on fashion’s creative front line, has his say.
“The most important thing our students can learn is that we are always learners. The faster the world changes, the more we must learn, and often we have to unlearn what we thought we knew” – Liliana Sanguino
Liliana Sanguino, Donna Karan director of the MFA Fashion Design and Society program; associate professor at Parsons School of Design, New York
Colombian-born Liliana Sanguino joined Parsons in 2023. Her PhD research Millones de Maneras is a collective project she co-directs with Colombian designer Laura Laurens and an Indigenous community of trans women, Emberá artisans from Antioquia, Colombia. She highlights the cultural and creative knowledge excluded by the dominant western fashion system.
What is the aim of your course?
The program aims to provide students with the time, space and mentorship to embark on a meaningful journey of self-development and discovery [so they can] become innovative designers for the future. Fashion should be understood as cultural, personal and societal, allowing design and context to continuously inform one another. We nurture designers who are visually articulate, materially curious and equipped to navigate, challenge and create in the systems that shape contemporary fashion.
How many students on average are in a cohort?
We have 21 in their final year and 18 in the first year.
What are the qualities/skills you look for in your students?
We welcome applicants from a wide range of backgrounds besides fashion design: architecture, textiles, product design and African American studies have all crossed over nicely.
What are the key challenges facing creative education?
One of the biggest is the loss of touch – the physical, sensory understanding of fashion as a three-dimensional, tactile discipline. Fashion should not only look good, it should feel good. Yet many students arrive with less experience of how a garment feels on the body in movement or space. They are fluent in the 2D world, but their making skills are often underdeveloped. Fashion is a 360-degree object, it needs understanding through touch, as much as through vision.
How do you equip your students for the rapidly changing world we live in today in terms of economic, climate and political uncertainty?
The world is changing quickly and the most important thing our students can learn is that we are always learners. It doesn’t stop at graduation. If anything, the faster the world changes, the more we must learn, and often we have to unlearn what we thought we knew. Change doesn’t come from institutions alone, it comes from individuals who can think critically, question systems and make informed decisions through their work. I focus on helping students make a habit of seeking information, questioning it and understanding it in context. I expose students to different perspectives, ensure they have access to information and help them see multiple possibilities. Their opinions must be their own, but they must be well informed.
What are your hopes for your students?
That they find success, whatever that means to them. I want them to leave the MFA feeling proud of the work they created, knowing they grew during their time here and feeling connected to their cohort. Those classmates often become lifelong collaborators, colleagues and friends, and that network is one of the most valuable things they take with them. I hope they shape the future of fashion in their own way and we remain in contact as they continue to grow.
Photography by Tristan Alex Oliveira and production by Sonya Mazuryk. Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 76 – CREATIVITY, CHANGE, FREEDOM – out NOW. Order your copy here.
