Program announcement for the 17th edition of the international and multidisciplinary FASHIONCLASH Festival. 14 – 16 November 2025 | Various locations across Maastricht (The Netherlands)
From 14 to 16 November 2025, FASHIONCLASH Festival returns for its 17th edition. Taking place at several locations throughout Maastricht. This international and multidisciplinary fashion festival provides a stage for a new generation of designers, artists, and performers from the Netherlands and over 25 countries worldwide.
Over three days, visitors can dive into a dynamic programme of performances, exhibitions, films, workshops, talks, and participatory projects. With programme components such as The CLASH House (fashion performance showcase at ENCI), the New Fashion Narratives exhibition at Bureau Europa, the Fashion Film Program & Awards at Lumière Cinema, the participatory program Fashion Makes Sense at Centre Céramique. And many more events across Maastricht, the festival presents a multifaceted and inclusive perspective on contemporary fashion culture.
The 2025 FASHIONCLASH Festival campaign, developed by ULKUHAN, explores the shifting notions of identity and authorship in the era of digital creation. Working at the intersection of fashion, digital technology, and critical design. Ülkühan Akgül created a series of AI-generated portraits and still lifes, each based on symbolic archetypes. Such as The Poet, The Performer, and The Designer. These archetypes mirror the festival’s participating artists and are accompanied by poems, together forming a multisensory narrative in which text, image, and digital process merge. Rooted in Ülkühan’s conceptual and speculative design practice, the campaign challenges conventional aesthetics in fashion by asking: Who creates? Who gets seen? How do we imagine who someone is? This multimedia composition embodies FASHIONCLASH’s mission to foster interdisciplinary exchange and critical reflection, serving as both a visual and poetic entry point into the 2025 edition. It invites audiences to lose themselves in new forms of storytelling that blur the boundaries between human and machine, self and ownership, maker and representation.
The program of this year contains, an exhibition with 4 invited designers. Who will work together for this years cultural framework. There will also be a set of performances at the Clash House. A place that functions as platform for performance disciplines. A fashion film programme will also be launched at the Lumière cinema. There is an open call collaborating with the event, offering young artists great opportunities. But also connecting them with professionals and business people to get both sides of the picture. At the end of it all there will be an afterparty!
