May 27, 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, Satoshi Morimoto, who’s an educator on fashion’s creative front line, has his say.
“We look for an intense level of commitment to one’s own creation – the refusal to compromise over a single line or even a millimetre of silhouette. This is the starting point of all meaningful work” – Satoshi Morimoto
Satoshi Morimoto, lecturer in the apparel design department at Bunka Fashion College, Tokyo
Satoshi Morimoto was born in Osaka and graduated from Bunka Fashion College in 2007, where he studied fashion technology. While he was a student, he also gained experience working as an actor and model. After graduating, he went back to Bunka and has been teaching there ever since. He is also a fashion instructor and commentator, drawing on his broad knowledge and sense of style.
What is the purpose of your course?
Over three years, students balance their experience during intensive technical training while developing their own personal aesthetic. They learn to project their identity into clothing and become designers capable of influencing the spirit of their time. Our mission is to nurture fashion designers who can stand on the global stage as strong, independent individuals.
How many students on average are in a cohort?
Approximately 80 per year.
What are the qualities/skills you look for in your students?
Technical skill and expressive ability are the basic language a designer needs to communicate. What we look for is an intense level of commitment to one’s own creation – the refusal to compromise over a single line or even a millimetre of silhouette and the determination to give everything and turn their inner vision into form. This is the starting point of all meaningful work.
While on the course, do your students develop an aesthetic, style or way of designing or thinking?
We don’t impose a specific style. We emphasise each student discovering their own viewpoint of aesthetic judgement.
What are the key challenges facing creative education?
Ironically, one of the greatest challenges is the overabundance of information. Students can instantly access global archives and trends. Yet in this constant information flow, there is a risk of confusing external opinions or algorithm-driven answers with one’s own sensibility. Time for deep self-reflection is often lost in informational noise. We do not reject virtual experiences – they are a form of reality and an important creative field. However, the deeper we move into the digital space, the more we risk losing physical experience: the weight of materials, sense of touch and unspoken atmosphere of real environments. Clear answers are hard to find, so the role of education is not only to teach how to select information, but cultivate the strength to trust the subtle discomfort felt at one’s core. By stepping away from excess information, touching materials directly and repeatedly questioning oneself, students can develop originality that is not a copy of existing ideas.
What values are important for the designers of the future?
They need a strong sense of empathy. They must be aware of social issues and be sensitive to emotional shifts, while also interpreting these realities through their own perspective. Fashion is both self-expression and a message – sometimes a love letter, sometimes a question – addressed to others and to society.
What are your hopes for your students as they graduate?
I want them to feel complete confidence in everything they have built over these three years. The time spent struggling, thinking and working with their hands at Bunka will become an unshakable foundation. What we teach is not only technique, but a way of thinking, a framework for understanding the world. After graduation, I hope they will continue to prove this way of thinking in their own environments and keep challenging themselves without fear. I hope they remain creators who never lose a sense of respect – for the talents of others, for different cultures and for the materials and techniques they work with. Those who show respect will ultimately be respected by the world. Even in a time of rapid change, I feel only hope for their future. I sincerely wish for them to step into the wider world and continue expanding the possibilities of fashion.
Photography by Elliot Morgan and production by Sonya Mazuryk. Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 76 – CREATIVITY, CHANGE, FREEDOM – out NOW. Order your copy here.
