Fashion is a great teacher – The fashion education podcast

In this episode you meet Tanveer Ahmed, senior lecturer in Fashion and Race at Central Saint Martins College, University of the Arts London. She is also a PhD candidate at The Open University, to investigate how to develop ways to teach anti-racist and non-capitalist forms of fashion design. Fashion is a great teacher talks to her about: education as a space for freedom and raising critical consciousness, about brutal educational experiences, about wanting to teach differently and a decolonial framework of love to reform fashion education.
Interview: Renate Stauss
Audio editor: Moritz Bailly
Music by: Johannes von Weizsäcker
Graphic by: Studio Regular

In this episode you meet Elke Gaugele – a highly political cultural anthropologist, writer, and curator, she is professor for Fashion and Styles at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and head of the Austrian Center for Fashion Research (ACfFR). Fashion is a great teacher talks to her about: intellectual activism, the impact of teaching fashion teachers, how making her own clothes determined her scholarship, and not wanting to reinvent herself as a Marxist.

Audio editing & mixing by: Moritz Bailly
Music by: Johannes von Weizsäcker
Graphic by: Studio Regular

In this episode you meet Christina Moon, Professor of Fashion Studies at Parsons School of Design in New York, an anthropologist who works on social ties and cultural encounters between design worlds and manufacturing landscapes across Asia and the Americas. Fashion is a great teacher talks to her about: cultivating community and collective wisdom, making culture in a 90-minute class, not holding on to one view, her learnings from teaching a baseball team.

Audio editing & mixing: Moritz Bailly
Music by: Johannes von Weizsäcker
Graphic by: Studio Regular

In this episode you meet Alistair O’Neill, writer, curator and professor of Fashion History and Theory at Central Saint Martins in London. His research concerns the role of material and making, and the representation of contemporary fashion culture. He fosters practice-led theory teaching and a mutually beneficial culture between education, curation and industry. Fashion is a great teacher talks to him about: the importance of understanding fashion through its making, about aptitude and appetite, and five pieces of stapled A4 paper as the perfect object to explain sustainable fashion to the public. Interview: Renate Stauss

Audio editing & mixing: Moritz Bailly
Music by: Johannes von Weizsäcker
Graphic by: Studio Regular

In this episode you meet Zowie Broach, one half of the legendary label B O U D I CC A and the Head of Fashion at the Royal College of Art in London. She has fostered a highly individualized approach to teaching fashion, fusing fashion and science, philosophy and poetry, challenging existing processes and products. Fashion is a great teacher talks to her about education as an experimental place not bullied by the industry, feeling alive through teaching, fashion as a drug and a harsh teacher, and not knowing how to teach right now. Interview: Renate Stauss

Audio editing & mixing: Moritz Bailly
Music by: Johannes von Weizsäcker
Graphic by: Studio Regular

In this episode you meet Valerie Steele. She is the director and chief curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She is also the founder and editor in chief of the Fashion Theory journal. As author, curator, editor, and educator Valerie Steele has been instrumental in creating the modern field of fashion studies and impacted its education lastingly. Fashion is a great teacher talks to Valerie Steele about finding her fascination for fashion in her mother’s evening dresses, teaching fashion in order to spend her life studying fashion and students as friends and vampires. 

Audio editing & mixing: Moritz Bailly
Music by: Johannes von Weizsäcker
Graphic by: Studio Regular

In this episode you meet Dilys Williams. She has been described as ‘The Rockstar of sustainable fashion education’. Dilys Williams is the founder and Director of The Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion. Fashion is a great teacher talks to her about her greatest fashion teachers, pioneering fashion education for sustainability and her grandmother’s sewing kit. Interview: Renate Stauss. 

Audio editing & mixing: Moritz Bailly
Music by: Johannes von Weizsäcker
Graphic by: Studio Regular