Hools of Fashion
Credit: private
Hools of Fashion is a collective fashion initiative based at Migrantpolitan, the cultural arts center at Kampnagel in Hamburg. Emerging from a critique of the fashion industry, the project has developed into an explicitly anti-racist and anti-fascist artistic practice that understands clothing as a site of political intervention rather than individual expression.
Working across fashion, performance, community organizing, and participatory production, the collective reclaims garments historically associated with power, nationalism, masculinity, or exclusion. Bomber jackets, men's suits, tracksuits, and other coded pieces are deconstructed, overprinted, embroidered, and transformed into visible statements of resistance. Rather than preserving existing meanings, Hools of Fashion exposes and rewrites them, using fashion to challenge dominant narratives and inherited symbols of authority.
The collective follows a collaborative DIY ethos, organizing open sewing workshops, shared production spaces, and collectively developed fashion shows. Through transparent decision-making and low-threshold participation, Hools of Fashion creates spaces in which artistic production and community building become inseparable, fostering solidaristic forms of working that challenge conventional hierarchies within both fashion and cultural institutions.
Alongside its artistic practice, Hools of Fashion is committed to anti-racist education, collective empowerment, and the creation of inclusive cultural spaces. By approaching fashion as a tool of social transformation rather than consumption, the collective demonstrates how clothing can become a medium for resistance, solidarity, and the continuous reimagining of collective identities.
For Transgressive Memory Festival Hools of Fashion will show their fashion work at a stall throughout the festival.