The 17th edition of the international and multidisciplinary FASHIONCLASH Festival takes place from 14–16 November 2025 in Maastricht. Stay tuned to our channels for updates, program announcements, and more festival news. In the lead-up to FASHIONCLASH Festival 2025, we proudly present the campaign developed by designer Ülkühan Akgül. This year's visual concept offers a poetic and critical reflection on identity, authorship, and digital creation.
Save The Date for the 17th edition: 14 - 16 November 2025.
From 14 to 16 November 2025, FASHIONCLASH Festival returns for its 17th edition. Taking place at various locations across Maastricht, this international and multidisciplinary fashion festival offers a stage for a new generation of designers, artists, and performers from the Netherlands and abroad.
During this three-day festival, visitors will be immersed in an inspiring program featuring performances, exhibitions, films, workshops, talks, and participatory projects. Program highlights include The Clash House (fashion performances), the New Fashion Narratives exhibition at Bureau Europa, the Fashion Film Program & Awards at Lumière Cinema, the Fashion Makes Sense participatory program at Centre Céramique, and the Amarte x FASHIONCLASH project—presenting a rich spectrum of perspectives on contemporary fashion culture.
Program Sneak Peek
Festival participants include designers Arva Bustin, Rakee Chen, POViS, and the duo Maxence Guenin & Thibault Villard, who will present performances in The Clash House where fashion intersects with themes such as climate, identity, and activism. In the Fashion Film Program, the co-creation film The Sneeze will premiere—a collaboration between emerging filmmakers and young participants. The New Fashion Narratives exhibition, curated by Jonas Zitter, Paula Dischinger, Rafael Kouto, and Tjerre Lucas Bijker, explores how fashion can serve as a tool for connection, resistance, and collective action.
The full program will be announced after the summer.
The first campaign visuals
The campaign for FASHIONCLASH 2025, developed by ULKUHAN, explores the evolving role of identity and authorship in the age of digital creation. Working at the intersection of fashion, digital technology, and critical design, Ülkühan Akgül constructed a series of AI-generated portraits and still lifes, each representing a symbolic archetype—such as The Poet, The Performer, and The Designer. These archetypes reflect the participating designers and are each accompanied by a poem, forming a multi-sensory narrative in which text, image, and digital process converge.
Rooted in Ülkühan’s conceptual and speculative design practice, the campaign challenges conventional fashion aesthetics by asking: who creates, who is seen, and how is identity visualized? This multimedia composition reflects FASHIONCLASH’s mission to foster interdisciplinary exchange and critical reflection, while serving as a visual and poetic gateway to the 2025 edition. It invites audiences to engage with new forms of storytelling that blur the lines between human and machine, self and ownership, creator and representation.
