Fashion Re-invented is a bold module (2x 15 ECTs) for students with an international mindset ready to rethink fashion, consumption and business on a global scale in a rapidly changing world.

Are you curious about how overproduction and overconsumption shape our societies? Do you want to explore how fashion, storytelling, design and business models can contribute to systemic change? And do you want to work creatively with students from different disciplines and cultural backgrounds?

Whatever your future career, whether in business, sustainability, design, media, or innovation, you will be increasingly expected to understand complex systems, collaborate with diverse stakeholders, and act as an agent of change. This module helps you develop exactly those skills.

Learning through future thinking, design and collaboration

The textile and fashion industry is a powerful example of a system under pressure. In this module, you critically explore how current production and consumption patterns are symptoms of deeper social, cultural, and economic dynamics. Using systemic thinking, future thinking, and speculative design, you investigate alternative futures and imagine new ways of organizing fashion, value creation, and consumption.

You work in transdisciplinary teams with members from various backgrounds and collaborate with external stakeholders from research and business. You will learn to integrate different perspectives into meaningful outcomes. Storytelling, visual media, and design are used not only to create concepts, but also as research and reflection tools.

Module 1 (15 ECTs) Future Thinking & Speculative Storytelling: systemic investigation

In the first module, the focus is on understanding and questioning the current system of fashion and consumption. Through theory, documentaries, guest lectures, field visits, and creative research assignments, you explore overproduction and overconsumption as symptoms of deeper systemic dynamics.

You learn to work with frameworks such as systemic thinking, future scenarios, and narrative analysis. Together with a transdisciplinary team and external stakeholders, you translate your insights into a speculative visual narrative for example a short film, photo-based story, or multimedia project.

Learning by doing is central: you experiment, reflect, and co-create. The module concludes with a Future Thinking Film Festival, where your team presents its work to a wider audience.

Module 2 (15 ECTs) From Future Vision to Concept & Impact: integrative intervention

In the second module, the emphasis shifts from exploration to action and design. Building on the future scenarios and narratives developed in Module 1, you co-create a concrete concept or intervention that addresses systemic challenges in the textile sector.

You work on concept development, speculative and sustainable business models, narrative persuasion, and sufficiency-based design. Creative storytelling is combined with a realistic business and impact layer, addressing viability, ethics, and scalability.

The outcomes of this module are presented in a Fashion Week–style showcase, where your work is exhibited as a prototype, service, business concept or experiential installation.

In this elective module you will learn more about:

• Understanding fashion and consumption as part of complex social, economic, and ecological systems.
• Applying systemic and future thinking to real-world sustainability challenges.
• Using speculative design, storytelling, and visual media as research and innovation tools.
• Collaborating in transdisciplinary and intercultural teams with researchers and businesses.
• Translating future visions into viable concepts with societal and business impact.

The module consists of two closely connected modules, each focusing on a different phase of the learning journey: exploration and imagination by systemic investigation, followed by concept development and implementation to createan integrative intervention.

Module 1:

The student, in collaboration with diverse stakeholders, applies systemic and future thinking to investigate Symptoms, Systems, Stories as a framework for understanding overproduction and overconsumption as symptoms of deeper social and business dynamics. By exploring narratives that can create new markets and / or re-shape consumer behaviour the student demonstrates emerging agency, collaboration skills, and transformative reflection within a transdisciplinary learning community via a visual medium.

Module 2:

The student, in collaboration with diverse stakeholders, develops and presents an integrative concept addressing systemic challenges in the textile sector. Building upon systemic and narrative insights, the student co-creates a design or intervention that combines creative storytelling with a layer that makes the design and intervention viable. Through critical reflection, collaboration, and self-awareness, the student demonstrates agency, transdisciplinary competence, and transformative professional growth.

This advanced program is open to Year 3 or 4 students from all study programs. It’s for curious, driven students who want to work on real challenges in fashion and textiles — not just from one discipline, but by looking at the bigger system behind production, consumption and business.

You’ll explore stories and narratives that can change how people think, buy and use fashion, and you’ll translate those insights into concepts or interventions that are both meaningful and viable. We’re looking for students who want to create impact and are ready to question the status quo.

English

The minimum requirement for English is European Framework B2. The Language Proficiency Report must be preferably completed by an English Language lecturer and accompanied by the application form. Read more about this. If you have any doubts, we offer you the option of having an interview to determine whether your level of spoken English is sufficient. The interview can be held via MS Teams.

To be decided

Both modules are assessed separately through a final artefact supported by background material, a reflection and active participation.

Enrolment and registration

Read more about registering for the minor and how to enrol at Avans University of Applied Sciences. There are a limited number of places available for the minor. Send an email to minoren.orm.denbosch@avans.nl to register. We will then reserve a place for you. Full = Full. Please clearly state at which location you would like to follow the minor. Your place is only guaranteed once you have sent us the learning agreement and received confirmation of this.

This minor is part of the Entrepreneurship and Retail Management (ORM-H) programme. You will need this information to enrol in Studielink.