The 2026 graduate fashion show celebrates a new generation of designers who are actively DE:CENTERING dominant global fashion systems and discourses by designing from within this region.
DE:CENTERING signals a deliberate shift in perspective—foregrounding fashion practices shaped by Southeast Asia’s cultural landscapes, material conditions and lived realities, rather than by distant industry norms or externally imposed cycles of production and consumption.
Many of the collections place nature and ecology at their core, foregrounding both the urgency and the potential for new modes of fashion-making to emerge from the region. In response to the structural challenges of the global fashion industry, these designers propose considered, meaningful approaches to creation and production—speaking not from the margins, but from within place.
From explorations of cultural identity and gender to an emphasis on materiality and craft, this year’s graduates refocus fashion’s gaze toward the tropics. Singapore is positioned not at the periphery, but at the centre of an evolving fashion geography—where fashion becomes a site of reflection, regeneration, and renewal, uniting creativity, ecology, and enterprise in shaping future identities from this region.
Image credit: Rewoven Ties (2025)
