Anyone coming to Arnhem in June can hardly ignore it: it’s fashion month in the city. In addition to the local ‘Fashion + Design Festival Arnhem’, ‘State of Fashion’, the Arnhem fashion biennial with an international character, is also taking place this year. The flags of the international fashion event are everywhere in the city, exhibitions and events are held in various locations and the focus is on accessibility for the public.
The theme of this year’s Biennale is ‘Ways of Caring’. As part of this theme, the June 3rd – July 10th Biennial will explore ways to make the fashion industry more sustainable and caring. “We don’t want State of Fashion to be a sophisticated event only for fashion fans,” said Iris Ruisch, program director of State of Fashion, at the press conference. “If we want to change the system, it has to be accessible to everyone,” she says. With the event, the organization hopes to reach out to designers, textile professionals, retailers and the general public and get them thinking about how these audiences can change their behaviour.
While the first edition of State of Fashion in 2018 took place in one location, the Melkfabriek in Arnhem on the outskirts of the city, the festival can now be found in five locations in the middle of the city. The Eusebiuskerk hosts the ‘Fashion as Encounters’ exhibition, Audrey Hepburnplein has lectures and guided tours, Showroom Arnhem hosts meet & greets and workshops, Rozet has the shopping street of the future and a swap and clothing library to see and in Park Sonsbeek, the Recovery Garden can be seen, where plants grow that can be used to naturally dye textiles.
State of Fashion spreads throughout Arnhem with ‘Ways of Caring’
The Biennale is not only for everyone, there is also a very large number of creative people who have contributed to the concept. The organization has already published an open call for curators of the Biennale. This resulted in ‘Not Enough Collective’ and ‘Fashion Open Studio’, which tackled the topic together. Various moments were then created in which the co-curators entered into a dialogue with the people of Arnhem, but also with other parties, in order to get an idea of the relationship that exists today between man and fashion. It was probably the most democratic process ever to set up a fashion event. “It’s a completely new element of the Biennale,” emphasizes Ruisch, “that we didn’t come up with everything ourselves.” This is an element that Ruisch would like to see preserved in the future. The organization has allowed many parties to participate in the co-creation process, and the aim during the event in June and July is to let people actively participate in the event.
It is therefore to be hoped that this edition of State of Fashion will have a lasting impact on the fashion industry, but also on the city of Arnhem. The municipality of Arnhem is so enthusiastic about the planters in Park Sonsbeek that they will stay after the Biennale. Hopefully the legacy of the ‘Ways of Caring’ theme will also continue. “We want to question the system and explore how many different relationships we can have with clothing,” said co-curator Marina Sasseron de Oliveira Cabral during the press screening. “We ask others to continue what we started during this Biennial.”
Fashion event State of Fashion wants to appeal to everyone
Both the exhibition in the Eusebiuskirche and the other events at the other locations give food for thought. The exhibition challenges the dominant notions of gender, beauty and identity within the industrial fashion system. The Eusebiuskirche is a beautiful location for the exhibition, where the large installations are shown to their best advantage. One of the installations is by Anabel Poh, a textile designer. In her installations she shows how textiles can be upcycled without adding anything to them. “Most forms of upcycling add at least 50 percent new material. I want to show that you can recycle by taking something away,” the designer told FashionUnited. Poh used pre-existing high quality scarves that, for example, had a printing error that made them impossible to sell and rendered them “unusable” to the original manufacturer. By removing threads and manipulating the material, Poh creates completely different patterns in the scarves, creating a whole new work of art.
Another work that leaves an impression is a large work on the other side of the church, which displays various types of handicrafts. A fitting title for the work is ‘Does it ever end?’ as the creators will continue to work on the installation throughout the five weeks of the event. The intent is to focus on the process of making and therefore the environment, community and relationships rather than the end product.
One thing is already certain: that ‘State of Fashion’ will make its audience think. There are elements that shake things up, whether you’re a fashion professional or not. There is so much to see that it actually takes several visits to take in everything, which of course is only positive for the city of Arnhem.
State of Fashion runs from June 3rd to July 10th in the city of Arnhem.
This article was previously published on FashionUnited.nl. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ