Discover how fashion culture goes beyond style, exploring identity, social justice, and heritage! This course equips you to critically examine fashion’s role in shaping society and drives you toward more culturally respectful and sustainable practices.
Sociocultural sustainability in fashion refers to practices that preserve, respect, and enhance the social and cultural dimensions of human life through fashion. It goes beyond environmental and economic aspects by focusing on how fashion impacts fairness, communities, traditions, identities, and well-being. Sociocultural sustainability in fashion asks not only how garments are made and what they are made from, but also who they affect, whose voices are heard, and what values are upheld. It seeks a fashion system that supports cultural diversity, social justice, and human dignity.
This course introduces you to the cultural and social meanings of fashion and the ways in which fashion shapes everyday life. You will learn how fashion connects to issues like human rights, representation, and heritage, and how these relate to broader questions of sustainability. The course also encourages you to think critically about how fashion influences – and is influenced by – societal norms, power, and global systems.
Through readings, visual materials, and interactive activities, you will engage with both theoretical perspectives and real-world examples of the sociocultural dimensions of fashion as well as reflect on your own relationship to fashion practices. By the end of the course, you will be able to explain the concept of fashion culture, identify key sociocultural issues, and understand how fashion can support a more just, and culturally respectful future.
- Opettaja: Natalia Kataila
- Opettaja: Seija Mikkola
- Opettaja: Marjaana Tanttu
- Opettaja: Heidi Wahl