The Many Faces of Fashion at FASHIONCLASH
|Amarte × FASHIONCLASH: Fashion as Atmosphere |
The first programme I attended was Amarte × FASHIONCLASH, and it immediately stretched what I thought a fashion presentation would be. Instead of a runway or exhibition, it unfolded like a cross-disciplinary performance. Fashion moves with classical music, spoken poetry, and choreography. It did not offer a clear storyline. There was no narrative to grasp. Rather, the performance created a mood. Something you sense before you decide what it means.
Watching the performers, a thought rose quietly, “a body learning to listen to itself again”. It was not from the poem, but simply how the piece made me feel in general. It was abstract and conceptual, as if the work was inviting a more inward way of paying attention. At some point, I stopped trying to interpret the performance entirely. I let it wash over me like the weather. Fashion here was not about performing for anyone. It was simply holding space, quiet, and attentive.
| Kantamanto — Fashion’s Uncomfortable Afterlife |
After the performance, I moved to a different venue for New Fashion Narratives – Collective Movements, a programme with a completely different energy. One installation focused on Kantamanto, Ghana. One of the world’s largest second-hand clothing markets and a destination for much of Europe’s discarded textiles.
A banner stated plainly:
“In the Netherlands, an average consumer buys 48 new garments and disposes of 40 each year.”
Seeing that statistic next to the footage of textile-choked beaches and markets collapsing under the weight of discarded clothes made it difficult to look away. The narrator’s comment, “Not even a single fish was trying to shake itself”. The water was so lifeless to a point that it felt like a metaphor for the entire system.
As I watched, I could not avoid turning inward. I thought about how casually I replace clothes that no longer feel like “me”, or how treads make desire urgent even when it is unnecessary. Sometimes I forgot that fashion is cyclical, that discarded styles return, and that my impulse to dispose has consequences far beyond my wardrobe. No one ever teaches us how to properly let go of clothes; we only learn how to acquire.
| Amor? Luta!: Fashion as Protest |
Another installation in the same programme, Amor? Luta! by Margarida Sintra Coelho Gonçalves offered a different perspective, not destructive but resistant. The title “Love? Fight!” captures the tension at the heart of the work: whether womanhood is expected to be soft or whether it has always been a form of struggle.
Gonçalves reworked Portuguese folk costume, a tradition often tied to conservative expectations of femininity. But instead of repeating that heritage, she embedded parts of her feminist manifesto directly into the textiles. Lace and embroidery became carriers of her manifesto: “Being a woman is not just being a mother.” “Being a woman is not being an unpaid domestic worker.” Simple lines, but sharp enough to question the roles women are still expected to perform. It reminded me that fashion is never neutral. Even when wrapped in tradition, clothing is political. It reinforces norms, or it disrupts them.
Background Note
FASHIONCLASH Festival began in Maastricht as a platform for emerging designers who treat fashion as a form of art and social reflection. It approaches fashion as a cultural practice. One that can be atmospheric, confronting, or resistant. Revealing how fashion can powerfully move from performance to global critique to feminist reimagining in the span of a single afternoon.
Author: Hailey Tai
“Hailey’s Comet” is where I write about what moves us. The art, books, and ideas that orbit our daily lives. From Tarkovsky’s films to banned books, and the logic of colour to questions of belief, each piece follows a spark of curiosity and lets it unfold into something humanly shared. It is a space to slow down and look closer. And to notice what usually slips past and the small things that end up meaning everything. Like a comet, each story passes through for a moment but leaves a trace of light behind.