Decolonizing the curriculum involves more than broadening the canon and revising reading lists. In challenging Eurocentric frameworks and making definitions of ‘fashion’ more inclusive, methods and approaches to teaching itself also require active reconceptualization in a closer questioning of the meaning of decolonised practice. This paper analyses experimental teaching within the MA History of Design programme at the Royal College of Art, London, which aimed to explore decolonial praxis while training postgraduates to critique fashion historiography. The ambition was also to broaden students’ perspectives of deeper reflexivity and wider professional development. We argue that the dismantling of Eurocentric bias and critiquing of institutional systems involves an uncomfortable unpicking of accustomed structures of knowledge that is both the ground zero and the end goal of decolonial histories. In modelling more collaborative modes of teaching, learning and writing, we suggest what a decolonised practice could look like for fashion studies, and the importance of emotion and position within a transformational potential.