June 10, 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, Cathleen Sheehan, who’s an educator on fashion’s creative front line, has her say.
“We give our students real-world experiences and life skills so that they can respond to challenges with resilience, professionalism and collaborative problem-solving” – Cathleen Sheehan
Cathleen Sheehan, chairperson and professor of MFA Fashion Design, Fashion Institute of Technology (part of the State University of New York)
Cathleen Sheehan, who leads the MFA programme, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and has a unique mix of creative and analytical skills.
What is the aim of your course?
In the FIT MFA program, we aim to develop the next generation of fashion designers and creative directors who will make a positive difference in the industry.
How many students on average are in a cohort?
Generally, it ranges from 18 to 20 students.
What are the qualities/skills you look for in your students?
We look for a genuinely strong desire to create their own original fashion collections and improve their skills within the structure of a rigorous academic programme. Before joining, students must have a strong foundation in garment design and construction skills, which ensures that they’re in a good position to provide clear direction to samplemakers and factories in later semesters and professionally. We love it when candidates come into our programme with an authentic commitment to sustainability and/or other innovative ways of contributing positively to advancing their craft and the greater industry and world.
What are the key challenges facing creative education?
In higher creative education, the faculty and I want to encourage students to dream, innovate and design. We also want them to learn about sustainability and other ways to improve garment design and production processes to positively impact the fashion industry. However, we also appreciate that students will graduate and enter a rapidly changing and highly competitive job market impacted by AI and global shifts. So that creates a challenge that FIT as an institution tries to balance, supported by its close ties to industry. It’s important that our students earn an advanced degree but also learn skills to help sustain their livelihoods and future careers. The program also features an international travel field study, as well as coursework in business and fashion activism, to help students understand the global industry context and collaborate within teams across disciplines.
How do you equip your students for the rapidly changing world we live in today in terms of economic, climate and political uncertainty?
With so many uncertainties in today’s world, we give our students real-world experiences and life skills so that they can respond to challenges with resilience, professionalism and collaborative problem-solving. In the first semester, we talk about the increasing pace of change, how ‘shift happens’, and the importance of learning and growing through mistakes. Our students leave FIT with a sense of who they are and how they want to contribute, but also with strong professional, technical and creative direction skills so that they can join teams and work well with others toward shared goals.
What are your hopes for your students as they graduate?
At the end of their MFA journey, our students have shown their collections in a NYFW runway show that launches them into industry. In the final semester, we have a professional development seminar to help students transition into jobs or sustain their own businesses. Fashion is such a competitive industry and we want them to be aware and prepared for those realities when they leave. After graduation, it is our hope that our learners continue growing and shining in the world, and making a positive difference in the fashion industry and communities where they live and work.
Photography by Kevin Hatt and production by Sonya Mazuryk. Jacket by UNVAIN. Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 76 – CREATIVITY, CHANGE, FREEDOM – out NOW. Order your copy here.
