April 9, 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, Khaya Mchunu, who’s an educator on fashion’s creative front line, has his say.
“I would like to see our students grow as thinkers, scholars, practitioners and designers. I would like to see their thinking cross over to society” – Khaya Mchunu
Khaya Mchunu, associate professor and head of fashion design, University of Johannesburg
Khaya Mchunu researches South African dress and fashion archives that explore alternative narratives. His practice focuses on community sewing circles and transdisciplinary, creative practices. Most of the course’s alumni work in academia and include Vaal Designer of the Year Kgotsofalo Mohau Monyamate, founder of Articles of Mars, and academic Kimberly Bediako.
What is the aim of your course?
To educate and train researchers who can contribute to the development of knowledge at an advanced level. The students complete a single project, culminating in a dissertation. The department has carved out areas in fashion with specific categories, such as digital communication, new materialism, co-design, fashion sustainability, design and visual culture, as well as gender in design.
How many students are in a cohort?
The course is quite competitive. On average we have a cohort of 10.
While on the course, do your students develop an aesthetic, style or way of designing or thinking?
While we offer a master’s by dissertation only, the learning from the undergraduate programmes play an important role in informing the postgraduate course. From the first year, students are exposed to a design philosophy that ameliorates problems through a cyclical process. At third-year level we use a staggered approach to help students think about design. A good example would be a combination of units that ask students to write about the designer they want to be. This is followed by the worldview assignment, using a video essay format. This is followed by theories and research methodology essays. This approach, as it can be applied to topics that fit within the broader umbrellas of fashion sustainability, activism, craft research and cultural studies within South African contexts.
What are the key challenges facing creative education?
While there is major progress compared to the last 10 years, creative education and the arts continue to be disproportionately funded compared to disciplines like the hard sciences. This points to a limited appreciation and understanding of its value to society and academia.
What are your hopes for your students as they graduate?
I would like to see our students grow as thinkers, scholars, practitioners and designers. I would like to see their thinking cross over to society. My hope would be for them to adapt their master’s topics into spaces they’re in career-wise, whether in corporate or academia, or as independent designers.
Photography by Shann Daniels and production by Sonya Mazuryk. Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 76 – CREATIVITY, CHANGE, FREEDOM – out NOW. Order your copy here.
