Iris Ruisch graduated from ArtEZ Fashion Design in 1998, after which she worked for several fashion houses as Head of Design. She was heavily involved in talent development for many years as Senior Design Consultant & Talent Scout at HTNK, and then became Creative Director of Amsterdam Fashion Week. In 2017, she became a co-founder of M-ODE Foundation, for which she continued to build talent development and sustainable fashion entrepreneurship as Managing Director. Out of this came collaborations such as Taskforce Fashion, with partners State of Fashion and FASHIONCLASH. These organizations have represented the Netherlands in the European Fashion Alliance since 2022. She is also an Advisor on Internationalization at the Creative Industries Fund and Chair of Fashion at the Dutch Design Awards. In 2022, she became Head of Program of State of Fashion, followed by the appointment of Director in June 2023.
LUCIJA ŠUTEJ: Perhaps we could start the conversation with your transition to the curatorial field, from working for different fashion houses as Head of Design? Also, how did your career path direct you toward establishing M-ODE Foundation?
IRIS RUISCH: Well, my background is fashion design, and for the first ten years of my career, I worked as a fashion designer and later on as a Head of Design (Paul Smith and Laundry Industry). However, I felt uncomfortable working on seasonal collections at a certain point -partially due to the added terrible influences on the climate but also from experiencing and seeing the unbearable circumstances of different factories.
I wanted to make a change on different layers and to sit at the other side of the table – to start guiding the designers and to prepare them for the very demanding industry they were about to enter. They must become more aware of the situations on various levels within the fashion industry – from the design process to the production. So, initially, I worked as a consultant for a recruitment agency for junior to senior fashion designers, entrepreneurs, and design managers, offering them advice on tackling different scenarios and companies. There is a gap in the expectations of the functions of the fashion industry – between the educational sphere and the industry at large- which I wanted to address.
As I transitioned to the role of the Creative Director of a commercial and sponsor-led organisation, Amsterdam Fashion Week (AFW), that had previously experienced problems with image – I was in an even better position to support younger designers. My mission with the AFW was to foster and create a more robust talent development system by enabling visibility and support for younger designers to gain exposure and find industry networks. Holland has an enormous support system for the cultural fields – especially geared towards young talent. At Amsterdam Fashion Week, I started working on balancing the cultural and commercial parts of the industry, and I love this combination (laugh). The culture field cannot do without the industry.
As AFW director, of course, the strategy is to connect all the dots – through collaborations with commercial brands to support the cultural part of the fashion field. I started my work with M-ODE Foundation (2017) concurrently with my role at the AFW. The foundation aimed to focus on and support sustainable entrepreneurship for brands and design start-ups, in conversation with many state organizations – to support change.
LŠ: And the story behind M-ODE Foundation? How did you support young creatives?
IR: My partner and I were frustrated about the lack of support and visibility for young start-ups and a general lack of awareness about the fashion system in relation to the industry’s effect on climate issues. Based on this, we founded M-ODE. The latter was a coaching hub based in Amsterdam, where every year we facilitate our WE MAKE M-ODE events, to give visibility on disruptive fashion practices and raise awareness around a more healthy fashion system (alternatives). As an example, at our first event in 2018, we collaborated with designer Bas Kosters and the municipality of Amsterdam, who dropped 1000s of kilo of textile waste, of which Bas created his collection Hope and launched it directly after with a 5-days pop-up atelier, during which he created this collection. Another example is the talk followed by an intimate presentation of Hacked BY by Alexander van Slobbe and Francisco van Benthem, paving the way by putting sustainability at the core of everything they do.
AFW is a large-scale portfolio bringing together different brands, and this commercial part eventually weakened and made it difficult to focus enough attention on talent development. It organically led to my decision to focus solely on M-ODE Foundation. For instance, we worked with different platforms (Fashionclash and State of Fashion), which led to an alliance (Taskforce Fashion).
LŠ: M-ODE Foundation partnered with the State of Fashion and Fashionclash on Taskforce Fashion; the latter is a program that investigates the relevance and transforming role of fashion concerning social-cultural issues, focusing on the industry’s future. As part of the programme, there were three teams formed in three cities – Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Maastricht. How did the programme support the turn towards responsible fashion?
IR: It was an initiative by the Creative Industries Fund in which a dialogue between the three cities of the organisazations – Arnhem, Amsterdam and Maastricht – was the central starting point which eventually lead to new collaborations.. within the fashion centers. We approached the project as an open field by posing questions such as: How should the programme look? How can we support designers in establishing their start-ups and leading long-term collaborations? We initially started the experiments via residencies, but in 2019, we were faced with a global pandemic. And it took us a year and a half to put the exchange into practice from the online experience.
LŠ: You are the director of the State of Fashion (STOF), a successor of Arnhem Mode Biennale (2005 – 2013) and a relatively new initiative. STOF was formed in 2017 by Sonsbeek and the State of Fashion Foundation with curator Jose Teunissen. The idea behind it was to explore alternatives and support research for a healthier future for the fashion industry. Could we explore the development of the organisation?
IR: If you cross-compare our work to Fashion Weeks, it is that we want to programme something other than the usual catwalk shows. We are not focusing only on the end product and commerce. We are looking at the industry’s history, supporting makers (specifically start-ups and designers), and new processes. We want change and to show disruptive voices: the backside of the industry and give voice to the makers and the system’s inequality. So, the target group was and is entirely different from Fashion Week.
The first biennial took place in 2018, and it was curated by José Teunissen, previously from the London College of Fashion and now the Dean of the Amsterdam Fashion Institute. She is on our supervisory board, and actually, we just had a meeting this morning (laugh) – having her around is so helpful because she knows the biennial and my own background. Thus, we can approach the State of Fashion from an education and production perspective, and we always invite a lot of different research collectives and critics to help us build upon our research.
We work with an international creative advisory council, our sounding board, which continuously reflects on our program. They exist of Otto von Bush (professor, Parsons), Orsola de Castro (co-founder of Fashion Revolution) Omoyemi Akerele (founder and CEO of Lagos Fashion Week), Aditi Mayer (LA, Visual storyteller & sustainability activist), Carla Fernández (design director) and Not Enough Collective (a collective of three South American women activating non-colonial practices within fashion and design).
Now, the State of Fashion is an international platform operating on many layers. As a biennial, taking place every two years- we have a strong interest in the educational role – through residencies, exhibitions, and research by designers (that is fed back into the industry). Our programme usually runs for seven weeks and brings together a pool of research and knowledge. We are also a facilitating partner for numerous European and international projects, such as Engage4Bio, Culture.Fashion, European Fashion Alliance or Mode Partners 025 – and we enable visibility for our partners during our events – thus creating a further international educational web.
With State of Fashion, we bring knowledge and network from abroad to Arnhem; we always work with international curators and collaborate with makers, designers, and brands from more than 30 countries – an essential part of these collaborations are residencies where makers can work on different projects and exchange knowledge. Some of our associated artists and curators are currently undertaking residencies in different continents and countries – from India, Bangladesh, Kenya, China, Iraq; and the outcome will also be presented at our next biennial (May- June 2024). Louise Bennetts and Rachel Dedman (the Victoria and Albert Museum in London) are curating the upcoming edition, and we are also actively working with different educational partners in Europe. Through our diverse partnerships and international activity, we are looking at developing this whole worldwide programme of curating.
This year will also present about 70 different makers and designers from Holland – so it is essential to have this cycle of knowledge where different perspectives and experiences are presented. With different locations in the city, we are looking at a public program of talks and symposia with our educational partners.
LŠ: You mentioned briefly the differences between The State of Fashion Biennale and Fashion Weeks, and I was thinking of how the two could work together to inspire change? The current state of the fashion industry needs to look at a more sustainable future.
IR: In general, International Fashion Weeks’ aim is to show and basically sell clothes; this is not directly a match; however, if Fashion Weeks could offer a platform to showcase the dialogue around the fashion system and necessary change, we would welcome a chance like that.
LŠ: With all the technological and scientific changes happening – how do you see the future of Fashion Weeks?
IR: There’s definitely a chance in the air; for example, the Opening of the Iris van Herpen exhibition in Paris, which was pointed out as the best haute couture show according to the New York Times. However, this was an exhibition, not a classic catwalk show. My belief is that we will see more exposure and chance within a different context than purely a catwalk show in the future. And, of course, there will be more hybrid activities due to the fact that people need to travel less and focus more on local or ‘laptop’ showcases. The State of Fashion is a frontrunner in support of this change.
