In close collaboration with its curator-team, consisting of Fashion Open Studio and NOT____ENOUGH Collective, State of Fashion wants to find alternatives for this system, which perpetuates inequality by choosing one specific perspective and interest over many others. There are countless ways of practicing fashion that are not yet recognized in the mainstream. How do we create space for different fashion systems to co-exist? A society that cares is a society prepared for repairs,’ states the team. They invite everyone to take part in their interventions: from repairing clothing to redesigning dysfunctional systems together.
NOT____ENOUGH Collective consists of Andrea Chehade Barroux, Mari Cortez and Marina Sasseron de Oliveira Cabral, three South American women based in the Netherlands. With their work, they want to transform the dynamics of oppressors and oppressed imposed by inherited colonial structures. From a personal to a systemic sphere, they collectively exercise non-colonial practices. Their aim is to take up the challenge of forming a plural world together and to initiate change within fashion, design and education.
ANDREA CHEHADE BARROUX
Andrea Chehade Barroux is a designer, artist, researcher, educator and activist from Chile with Palestinian and French roots. Her interdisciplinary practice is based on the observation of sociopolitical phenomena, from which through embodied practices she questions the power structures and the production of knowledge by using fashion as a medium. Her interest in fashion lies in its intrinsic connection to both the individual and the social body. She has an educational background in Fashion Design (Chili) and in fashion strategy (The Netherlands). Currently, she is immersing herself as an insider and outsider to research the importance of collective practices, solidarity and hope, as alternatives to resist neoliberal models.
MARI CORTEZ
Mari Cortez is a Brazilian designer, researcher and critical practitioner that has been based in the Netherlands since 2018. She researches fashion as a social phenomenon and explores togetherness through design. By experiencing a different context when moving to Europe, she realized that power structures formed in colonial times remain nowadays and play an important role in society. They frame how people and cultures are treated and explain how social inequality is formed. Cortez aims to exercise a horizontal and open dialogue about these complex topics, aiming to dissolve the process of otherness and bring people together. She has a BA in Design (Brazil) and an MA in Fashion Strategies (The Netherlands).
MARINA SASSERON DE OLIVEIRA CABRAL
Marina Sasseron de Oliveira Cabral is a Brazilian creative that has been working in the fashion field for nineteen years. As a designer, researcher and critical practitioner in fashion, her multidisciplinary approach explores the micro-political aspects of materiality, as well as the performativity of clothes and materials in different socio-cultural arrangements. She has a BA in Fashion Design (Brazil) and an MA in Fashion Strategy (The Netherlands). She is currently interested in the potential of participatory practices as tools for unlearning oppressive embodied knowledge.
