Social Fabric brings together a group of contemporary fashion designers and artists that explore the cultural fabric of fashion, and its rituals and trepidations. Contemporary fashion designers are spearheading a new critical way of making and consuming fashion. They are exploring complex cultural issues as well as the role of fashion in society.

Fashion is part of our everyday life, and it speaks volumes of our connections. Even a single item of clothing can link us to communities and networks; and how we consume and produce fashion is tied to complex cultural behaviours, locally and globally. Fashion feeds on collective consumption where we use objects to show social status. In contrast, fashion also connects us in proactive and critical communities where creating is an act of activism that expresses solidarity and resistance.

The exhibition presents fashion, textile art, sculpture and film. It includes both established and emerging designers and artists from the Nordics and Northern Europe.

This exhibition is the third instalment of a wider, ongoing Nordic collaboration between the Danish fashion organization ALPHA, the Swedish design and craft heritage museum Röhsska, the National Museum of Norway in Oslo, the Copenhagen Contemporary art center in Denmark, and EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art.