Fashion and Power – Who’s In, Who’s Out, and Who Decides?
Fashion, as both an industry and a field of study, actively operates through systems of exclusion for marginalized communities, gender-nonconforming individuals, indigenous makers, disabled bodies, and others who do not align within the margins. Legitimacy over knowledge is often granted through institutions that uphold Eurocentric, capitalist, and colonial frameworks which leaves us to question “Who’s In, Who’s Out, and Who Decides?”
This panel explores fashion as more than aesthetic expression, but as an important site of knowledge production, where those in power shape what is deemed valuable and hold responsibility for what is preserved, and what is left out. Fashion is also a space that holds the potential of refusal and resistance. We aim to question fashion power structures and put forward—embodied, lived bodies that were left at the margins. By reclaiming silenced histories and resisting erasure, fashion can transform from a tool of control into an act of collective power that emerges outside the established canon.With Roberto Filipello, Tamara Pobleto and José Teunissen.
About the speakers
José Teunissen is professor of Fashion, Design and Technology and director of the Amsterdam Fashion Institute (AMFI). She previously worked as a fashion educator and researcher at the University of the Arts London (UAL) where she was dean of the School of Design and Technology at the UAL’s London College of Fashion. She co-published more than 20 books and many articles and led i.e. five European projects on digitalisation and sustainability in fashion and its effect on education. Her research is focused on the transformational impact of Fashion Tech, inclusivity and new value systems.
Roberto Filippello is Assistant Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, where he is affiliated with the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. His scholarly work has been published in a wide range of academic journals. He is the co-editor of Fashion and Feeling: The Affective Politics of Dress (2023) and of two special issues on gender and sexuality in relation to fashion cultures. At present, he is completing his first monograph, titled Dressed for Dissent: Decolonial Fashion and the Queer Struggle for Palestine (forthcoming 2026).
Tamara Poblete is a Lecturer in Global Fashion Theory at the University of Amsterdam. Her research explores the resignification of clothing as a tool for protest in feminist uprisings in Latin America from 2015 to the present, through the concept of activismo de género. In this context, clothing and its embodied actions are analysed as forms of aesthetic and political representation, with an emphasis on harnessing the thought and resistance practices of anti-colonial feminisms. She is co-founder of the Chilean transfeminist and transdisciplinary collective Malvestidas (Poorly Dressed).
Teng Teng Ho (moderator) is a programmer at SPUI25 in Spe. She is driven by the intersection of culture, fashion, design, and identity. As she pursues her Master’s in Design Cultures, her focus is on dismantling the Eurocentric, cis-male paradigms that have long dominated both creative and academic spaces. She is passionate in connecting with diaspora communities through storytelling and art, believing in the power of creative expression to break echo chambers and nurture shared understanding.
