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Meet The Archetypes of 2025 FASHIONCLASH Festival!

The 2025 FASHIONCLASH Festival campaign, developed by ULKUHAN, explores the shifting notions of identity and authorship in the era of digital creation. Working at the intersection of fashion, digital technology, and critical design, Ülkühan Akgül created a series of AI-generated portraits and still lifes, each based on symbolic archetypes — such as The Poet, The Performer, and The Designer. These archetypes mirror the festival’s participating artists and are accompanied by poems, together forming a multisensory narrative in which text, image, and digital process merge. 

Rooted in Ülkühan’s conceptual and speculative design practice, the campaign challenges conventional aesthetics in fashion by asking: Who creates? Who is seen? How is identity imagined? This multimedia composition embodies FASHIONCLASH’s mission to foster interdisciplinary exchange and critical reflection, serving as both a visual and poetic entry point into the 2025 edition. It invites audiences to lose themselves in new forms of storytelling that blur the boundaries between human and machine, self and ownership, maker and representation. 

Meet The Filmmaker: Fashion Film Program

Film Screenings | Lumière Cinema

The Fashion Film Program at Lumière Cinema celebrates designers and filmmakers experimenting with the short fashion-film format. Featuring a selection of 35 films from around the world, it offers a rich and diverse panorama of perspectives, disciplines, and narratives. On Thursday 13 November, FASHIONCLASH and Lumière Cinema co-present the screening of Rains over Babel. On Friday evening, the six finalists will be revealed, followed by the presentation of the FASHIONCLASH Festival 2025 Fashion Film Awardand the Kaltblut Magazine Award, judged by Adriano Batista, Marcel Schlutt, Kateřina Hynková,and Elie Inoue. Two FASHIONCLASH-produced films will also premiere during the festival: The Sneeze and HANGMAN & CO., both developed within the Fashion Film Development Program.

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Meet The Writer: Fashion Makes Sense

Exhibition | Centre Céramique

Fashion Makes Sense is FASHIONCLASH’s ongoing participatory programme dedicated to social design, inclusion, and education. With this initiative FASHIONCLASH connects professionals and non-professionals —especially young people —in collaborative creative processes. The exhibition on the third floor of Centre Céramique presents results from several participatory projects.

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Meet The Designer: New Fashion Narratives

Exhibition | Bureau Europa

For this year’s exhibition programme, FASHIONCLASH invited four fashion makers to collaboratively develop the curatorial concept for New Fashion Narratives at Bureau Europa. Earlier this year, they took part in a residency week in Maastricht, which led to the creation of this year’s curatorial framework. The exhibition, titled “Collective Movements”, is curated by Jonas Zitter, Paula Dischinger, Rafael Kouto, and Tjerre Lucas Bijker, and explores how fashion can act as a tool for connection, resistance, and collective action —operating at the intersection of fashion design, activism, and communal practice. The curators aim to present works that transcend dominant systems by embracing cultural rituals, shared knowledge, and collaboration.

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Meet The Print designer: Class of 2025/ ESSENCE : Marlon Claessen

Exhibition | Social Hub - Atrium & Social Hub - Sprinxcour

This year, FASHIONCLASH x The Social Hub Maastricht host an additional showcase highlighting a new generation of designers, launching with a festive evening of music (DJ Kirakira and performance during the festival opening night on Friday 14 November).  
Class of 2025 presents a selection of emerging designers graduating in 2025 from Dutch academies including AMFI, HKU, ArtEZ, Design Academy Eindhoven, Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts, WDKA, and Gerrit Rietveld Academie.  
In parallel, Marlon Claessen curates the ESSENCE Exhibition, featuring international designers whose work embodies FASHIONCLASH’s mission: to foster intercultural dialogue, creative exchange, and socially engaged fashion narratives. The presentation also includes work by Toneelacademie Maastricht students. 

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Meet The Poet: X AMARTE

Installation & Performance | Jav van Eyck Academie

Once again, the Amarte Fund and FASHIONCLASH join forces to offer artists from different disciplines the opportunity to experiment with fashion and present new work. From an open call, three artists were selected and paired with fashion designers to collaboratively develop and present new creations. Discover three new installations /performances where fashion clashes with poetry, classical music and performance art.

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Meet The Soundscaper: The CLASH House

Performance | ENCI Peutzhal

This edition of The CLASH House takes place in the Peutz Hall on the ENCI site in Maastricht. The CLASH House serves as a showcase and development platform for designers working across fashion and performance disciplines. Through a creative coaching trajectory led by theatre-maker Nadîja Roza Broekhart and choreographer Laisvie Andrea Ochoa, and under the direction of Giovanni Brand, the designers explore alternative ways of making and presenting fashion.

CLASHLAB is a new interdisciplinary residency programme initiated by Musica Sacra, Nederlandse Dansdagen, Limburgs Museum, FASHIONCLASH, SALLY, and Via Zuid, offering space for experiment, encounter, and artistic growth. 

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Meet the Performer: Afterparty

Afterparty | Dans - en partycentrum Bernaards

The FASHIONCLASH Festival Afterparty is an invitation to celebrate the power of unity, empowerment and the importance of making our voices heard. When we all stand individually and authentically in our power, our voice becomes even louder when we unite. Come and celebrate unity through fashion, music, dance and performance.

The Afterparty is an evening of unity and an experience where we gather as a collective, grounded in authenticity and strength. By sharing who we are and embracing each other's individuality, we create a community that is both powerful and inspiring.

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