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Marcus Wilmont from the Royal Danish Academy held his second workshop series for our GFC students. This time, Marcus focused on practical in-studio exercises that explore shape generation from different perspectives. While doing so, Marcus encouraged the students to reflect on how we as fashion designers, perceive body standards and design for unreal bodies. This brought up discussions about inclusion and diversity of body types, gender, ethical or social backgrounds in the fashion system, and the role of the designer in creating alternative perspectives.

As a part of the class Japanese Art & Design, our first year students had the chance to visit some of the shows from the s/s 2025 Rakuten Fashion Week here in Tokyo last week. For this excursion, we invited ms. Takano Kumiko, who is a key figure for ACROSS, the trend observing association under PARCO, and who has been supporting our GFC course as a part-time lecturer from the start of the program for over ten years.

Thanks to ms. Takano, the students were able to view multiple shows, including TELMA, MITSURU OKAZAKI, SHINYA KOZUKA, the Global Fashion Collective and WILDFRÄULEIN. Furthermore, the students were also able to meet and discuss their research projects with Vogue Italia senior Editor and young designer talent scout Sara Maino. A precious opportunity, from which the students learnt a lot.

On April 8, 2024, we held a workshop organized by Marcus Wilmont, who teaches fashion design at the Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation. He introduced existing dichotomies in fashion and discussed how designers have the responsibility to create alternative perspectives that address matters of inclusion and diversity concerning body types, age, gender, and ethnic or social backgrounds, among others.

Through the practical workshop, he demonstrated how designers can re-examine and explore the design development process in ways that allow them to develop new, alternative artistic narratives. While working on the mannequin, the students had the opportunity to design for their muse, a real person they know and have a relationship with.

On November 24, 2023 we were joined by Sarmily Sarker from BGMEA University of Fashion & Technology, who visited Japan and Tokyo for research. As part of her research schedule, ms. Sarker organized a workshop featuring “Nakshi Kantha,” a traditional embroidery technique of the Bengal region in Bangladesh and India. During the workshop, our GFC students had the opportunity to learn more about the history of the technique, and got to experiment with it firsthand through making some small samples. The three-hour workshop provided the students a space to share thoughts and experiences while embroidering, and we thank ms. Sarker for sharing this wonderful technique with us.

On November 20th, 2023, we organised a special lecture from Diana Gardeneira, an  Ecuadorian-Costa Rican, visual artist and designer. She talked about her latest work “NMTKS” (No me toques in Spanish, Don’t touch me in English), which addresses issues of visibility of violence against women, protection, lack of representation, sisterhood, stories and collectivity. Using fashion’s political means of expression, Diana shared with GFC students her ideas of being a woman and how she confronts patriarchal structures through a series of clothing pieces.

Diana is part of the collective 闘う糸の会／Hilos que Luchan, Manos que Sanan (Fighting threads, healing hands in English), which promotes women’s empowerment and international exchange through collaboration between artists and citizens in Latin America and Japan.