The 17th FASHIONCLASH Festival filled three November days in Maastricht with performances, films, workshops and shows made by students, activists and designers from over 25 countries. There was no glossy catwalk, no front-row pecking order, just a former cement works, a cinema, a public library and other ordinary spaces taken over by people who treat clothing as a language instead of a product.

Alessandro Santi & Brankica Sanadrovic

New Fashion Narratives’ “Collective Movements” occupied Bureau Europa for the full three days. After a residency week in Maastricht, Jonas Zitter, Paula Dischinger, Rafael Kouto and Tjerre Lucas Bijker built the exhibition around one premise: fashion as connection, resistance and collective action. Alessandro Santi & Brankica Sanadrovic invited visitors to cast each other’s torsos and grow living SCOBY skins for The Memory of Skin; women from a Naples social sewing workshop joined mare mito to transform grandmother linens into A Sewing Machine of One’s Own; CIMO laid out 100 embroideries stitched by asylum seekers, Ukrainian refugees and elderly locals in therapeutic sessions. Mariia Pavlyk wove Tripillia-Cucuteni symbols into Hutsul fabric for Spero; Kantamanto Social Club ran up-cycling activations linked to groups in Ghana, Canada, Egypt and India; The Platform bolted a garden fence to the wall, shaped it into monumental angel wings and hung a joint collection by eight designers from the ribs. G(end)er Swap spread tables of scissors, dye and second-hand clothes so anyone could hack the gender binary on the spot, while Kim Gemmink refused to number or fix any “looks” in In The Corners Of A Circle, Giada Lou Hammel made audiences move in a phone-free circle for DREIHUT, Hannah Smith padded crutches and wheelchairs with soft add-ons in The Gentle Frame, and Karl Joonas Alamaa & Lisette Sivard screened their road documentary MANIA GRANDIOSA, shot during a 125 km performative fashion walk that asks why the industry still worships novelty.

The fashion-film night at Lumière Cinema screened the full programme and gave the 2025 Fashion Film Award to James Nolan’s “Do I?,” a bridal short that pits the wish for stability against the pull of uncertainty through couture bridal and guest looks. Lilian Brade, Phuong An Phi and Niclas Hasemann’s poetic montage “The Feminine Urge” won the Kaltblut Magazine Award for its take on female rage and the monstrous feminine; two more titles, Ferhat Ertan’s Circle and Marloes IJpelaar’s Motherfocking Art, received honourable mentions.

Do I? Salt Murphy Fashion Film by James Nolan

At the old ENCI quarry on Saturday 15 November, The CLASH House filled Peutz Hall with six short works: ULTRA-ORA’s Après Nous dressed Distributors, Wetlanders and La CEOrenissima for a post-flood society where clothing signals hidden agendas; Rakee Chen’s Melody Atlas let a piano generate garments that chart an emotional life-cycle; POViS played out a Lithuanian riddle about choosing your own path versus seeking tradition; Thibault Villard & Maxence Guenin fused textile research with a handmade sound system in their raw pop poem untitled (bassline II); EMIRHAKIN × David Siepman mapped breath, memory and desire in Once it’s a memory, it’s too late., where fabric and lights answered each exhale; and CLASHLAB’s trio of Lioba Benold, Shu Jantje and Jelle Huizinga unveiled a ten-minute piece stitched together in ten days of cross-discipline trial and error, all without anyone branding the results as “wearable tech,” the costumes simply shifting, glowing or fraying whenever the moment demanded.

At the Social Hub Maastricht, the Class of 2025 exhibition gathered fresh graduates from AMFI, HKU, ArtEZ, Design Academy Eindhoven, Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts, WDKA, and Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Jamie AirMountain built ‘ALOHA Wijk aan Zee’ from beach trash, wood, wetsuits and denim; Maide translated Turkish basket-weaving into minimalist Dutch-Turkish garments for ‘Gurbet’; Zhenyi Zhou mixed 3-D-printed bones, silicone and reclaimed textiles in ‘Gu Spirit-Post-Human Witchcraft’; Karolina Wójtowicz cut motorcycle gear and latex for ‘POLISH YOUR GEAR’; Claire Sillekens showed interactive absurdist costumes in ‘De zon schijnt precies op je gezicht’; Paco Teepe screen-printed childhood memories onto T-shirts for ‘Monuments T-Shirts’; Jessie Romkens sprayed, patched and embroidered stage-wear in ‘LOUD & LIMITLESS’; Babs Groote Schaarsberg built mechanical sculptures honouring Salland attire in ‘Een Ode Aan’; and Larissa presented up-cycled, volume-distorted retail leftovers for ‘Redress Is Rising’. Alongside them, Marlon Claessen’s ESSENCE exhibition featured international designers plus Toneelacademie Maastricht students Valerie Ludwig’s voice-and-movement piece ‘The Songs of Girlhood’ and Jeroen Bik’s interactive digital-fashion work ‘ME TOCA MAÑANA’.

Andra Blažģe

Babs Groote Schaarsberg

Jamie AirMountain

Karolina Wójtowicz

Larissa de Jager

Paco Teepe

Valerie Ludwig

Zhenyi Zhou aka Apriscilla

The festival’s afterparty served as a co-creative platform for community and expression, culminating a weekend dedicated to fashion as a multifaceted and inclusive art form.

SAVE THE DATE FOR THE 18TH EDITION: 13-15 NOVEMBER 2026