Detail, Fashion Utopias: International Fashion Showcase (IFS)

Utopia is not simply a re-imagination of the present, it also looks back to things we have lost or are at risk of losing. In another famous Utopian vision, News from Nowhere, William Morris imagined a place where traditional crafts are revived, transformed and reimagined. Utopia can be as much about nostalgia as the longing for a better future, and as much about rediscovering as discovery.

Since 2012 the International Fashion Showcase has encouraged designers and curators to delve into their history and cultural heritage to reinvent it. In Fashion Utopias: International Fashion Showcase 2016 we have encouraged them to look to visions for an ideal world in their past and recapture them for the present.