The prevailing fast fashion model operates at a rapid tempo and prioritises speed-to-market, with each stage of the global supply chain exerting detrimental effects on society and the environment. Education is a critical field in which to start re-visioning the discipline, offering alternative ways of educating fashion designers, and transforming the status quo of the fashion industry. This exploratory paper sets out to establish the teaching and learning of the environmental and social implications of the intricate fashion system through a transformative pedagogy at the MA Fashion at the Royal College of Art (RCA).

The programme is already undergoing a reform period, moving away from the singular iconic designer role, seasonal collections, and fossil-fuel derivatives to transformative social action. Through critical, unbounded imagination, the RCA's Fashion MA is conceived as a catalytic transformative practice committed to a long-term systemic transformation of fashion's vision, production and consumption.

This paper advocates for a pivotal transition towards a critical systems curriculum, integrating the significance of ancestral practices, the concept of waste colonisation, and fundamental principles grounded in regenerative cultures. We aim to inspire and equip students to be initiators of change, so we ask:

How might fashion education through critical experimentation offer a new way of reconfiguring our relationship with the earth and its inhabitants?

Open Access article published under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License.