Debate: Fashion, Gender and Identity

Fashion Design hosted a debate on gender with a magnificent panel spanning researchers, activists and corporate advisers on gender diversity. Topics of discussion included gender quotas as a means of achieving corporate diversity, the fashion industry’s use of diversity as marketing strategy and the body as a tool for empowerment. The debate was part of the KADK effort to work with UNs 17 Sustainable Development Goals, in this instance Goal 5 on Gender Equality.

 The speakers were:

• Heidi Rottbøll Andersen, CEO and founder of Living Institute and Senior Associate of Gender Intelligence Group. She advices companies and public administration on diversity.
• Louise Kjølsen, self-proclaimed Twerk Queen, Fourth Wave feminist activist with an MA in psychology.
• Philip Warkander, researcher at Modevitenskap at Lunds University. His Ph.D. was an ethnographic study of the relation between style, sexuality and gender in contemporary Stockholm
• Erik Hansen-Hansen is an Associate Professor at KADK and his Ph.D. centered on beauty, gender and seduction in luxury fashion.    

The event also featured a pop-up exhibition and fashion show by Fashion Design students working with gender as inspiration.

Photos: Agnes Saaby Thomsen