IFFTI (International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutes) is an international network of fashion and textiles institutes representing a diverse range of 55 world-leading institutions from 23 countries. The foundation provides a platform for sharing skills and knowledge and advancing the professional development of fashion education and research.
This year also marked the third time LCF has hosted IFFTI since the foundation’s establishment in 1998. Professor Andrew Teverson, Head of London College of Fashion, emphasises the privilege of hosting such a global gathering:
“LCF has a long and rich history of driving innovation in fashion, and as one of the world’s leading institutions in this field, we are dedicated to using fashion as a force for change — socially, environmentally, and culturally.”
Each year, the host institution decides on the conference’s theme. John Lau, Dean of Academic Strategy, explains that the relocation to East Bank in Stratford, building local community ties, and establishing partnerships quickly emerged as central matters. “We didn't just land in Stratford — we spent a lot of time working with schools and the local community before the building was even designed,” he explains.
Working with emerging technologies was another topic that called for consideration of ethics and the blurred lines between digital and physical, material and immaterial. “How people interact with fashion now has changed so much, and that needed a lot of discussion,” Lau believes.
Surprisingly, the most appreciated theme this year was pedagogy, featured in the agenda for the very first time. “We're all teachers as well — we want to talk about how we teach fashion,” Lau notes, highlighting that discussions around how fashion lives in a classroom setting are often overlooked at other conferences.
When it came to finalising the overarching narrative of the conference, Lau realised that it all centred around forming the future of fashion. “It's not just about standing in front of a classroom and talking for an hour — there’s so much more to it than that,” he explains.
For Ingo Rollwagen, Professor for General Management in the Department of Design at Hochschule Fresenius, University of Applied Sciences in Germany, this was the ninth IFFTI gathering he had attended.
Coming from a cross-industry background — including car mechanics, chemistry, and engineering — Rollwagen decided to submit a paper presentation this year because the theme sparked a real interest in him.
For him, meeting people from around the world is always inspiring. “I really love seeing the differences, but also the commonalities in pedagogical approaches. And I think we’ve become a little more down-to-earth in terms of sustainability,” he concludes.
Attending such conferences is not only an excellent opportunity to discover new research and ideas, but also for LCF-based PhD students to get their first taste of working as an academic.
For the first time in the conference’s history, a dedicated networking event was included in the agenda. “We really wanted to have a space for PhD students to get together and celebrate their presentations and posters by simply spending time with each other,” Lau says.
A longer lunch break was also introduced to encourage human connections. “That’s the moment where they want to talk to each other and catch up with old friends — because it’s always the same group of people,” Lau explains, adding with a smile that even an hour and a half wasn’t enough for some.
Although the week featured many remarkable moments, Lau most vividly recalls hosting the keynote panel. The differing understandings of what fashion and the industry are made the panel a challenging one to chair — but he believes that disagreement is what made it so brilliant.
“For the first time, it wasn’t just a panel event where everybody agreed and there was no real discussion,” he says. “I want people to feel safe to talk about fashion openly, because that’s how you advance the field in research and teaching.”