NEW FASHION NARRATIVES:
MEET THE TEAM

For this year’s exhibition programme, as part of FASHIONCLASH Festival 2025, four independent fashion practitioners were invited by FASHIONCLASH to form a curatorial team and collaborate on the concept for the New Fashion Narratives exhibition.

This year’s curatorial team includes Jonas Zitter, Paula Dischinger, Rafael Kouto, and Tjerre Lucas Bijker, were invited by FASHIONCLASH to co-create the concept for this year’s exhibition during a Residency Week in April 2025. With ‘Collective Movements’, they aim to curate a selection of work that sits at the intersection of fashion design, activism, and communal practices, embracing cultural rituals, knowledge systems, and collaboration over domination.

Jonas Zitter

As co-founder of Netherlands-based fashion platform and podcast KledingCast, Jonas is fully focused on connecting all Dutch fashion communities. After founding KledingCast in 2020, he quickly realised there are many pockets of creativity spread throughout the country. Alongside the co-founder, his mission has been to champion the brands and creatives pushing the envelope in the Lowlands, all while fostering a more inclusive cultural landscape. With meaningful dialogue at its core, KledingCast—and Jonas himself—ensure that the fashion conversation continues to evolve.

Paula Dischinger

Paula is a multidisciplinary artist and designer, holding a Bachelor in Fashion Design from the Institut Français de la Mode in Paris. Her final collection was featured in the opening show of Paris Fashion Week 2023. She is currently completing her Master's in Performance Art: Society at Central Saint Martins in London. Her work explores the hand-brain cooperation, as well as the dynamics between individual and community. A focus lies on public spaces. Deeply tactile and conceptually driven, she creates experiences that merge the personal with the collective. Her practice is rooted in haptics, presence, and socially engaged exploration. In 2024, she participated in Clash House with HERDENTIER.

Rafael Kouto

Rafael, who lives and works between Lausanne, Maastricht, and Venice, is Swiss with Togolese origins. A creative director, fashion and textile designer, as well as a researcher and teacher, he specializes in upcycling methods and sustainable, engaging strategies with a particular focus on open-source practices, heritage, and craftsmanship. Currently, he is a Research Fellow in Fashion & Textile Material at the Future Materials Bank at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, in collaboration with the Research Collective for Decoloniality and Fashion.

Tjerre Lucas Bijker

Tjerre operates at the intersection of fashion design, artistic research, and queer theory. As a design researcher and fashion practitioner, they challenge fashion narratives by exploring alternative perspectives on queer and subversive bodies. They critique how capitalist fashion imposes normalized imagery on non-normative identities. Their work spans multiple formats, including publications, performances, garments, and workshops, using design research, archival exploration, and social design. Through counter-archiving and self-publishing, they aim to recover overlooked histories and expand fashion's discourse within socio-political contexts.