Reflecting on the future of fashion design education: new education models and emerging topics in fashion design

The essay offers a theoretical and reflective contribution to the debate on fashion education presenting the sectoral references for a renewed fashion design education but also discussing the changed and changing educational context that today pushes fashion design education in overcoming its craft-centered and self-referential focus and becoming less peripheral within the design scientific debate. Factors, such as the complexity of contemporary globalized markets, the accelerated technological innovation, the multifaceted nature of networked social communities, require a quicker speed in renewing educational contents, as well as the acknowledgment that lifelong learning is now essential for sustainable competitiveness, social inclusion, and active citizenship. The essay will analyze this series of challenges that pressure fashion in re-evaluating its own ontology and, as a consequence, the ways of informing the fashion education system, critically discussing possible perspective for future development.