The biennial Global Fashioning Assembly (GFA), with a first edition in 2022, is a unique online gathering of local fashion communities from all over the world to decenter and decolonise knowledge creation and sharing on body fashioning practices and heritages. 

Rather than the event hosting participants, the participants pass on the hosting of the event to ensure self-representation, -determination and -governance. Its main aim is to disrupt western-centric international fashion gatherings that often operate as gatekeepers to justify and perpetuate excluding and discriminating logics and validate English-centred knowledge. 

Sparked by the grassroots-to-global possibilities of the digital, it goes beyond the limitation of one singular physical presentation, by bringing together a diversity of experiences, knowledges and cultural heritages by a diversity of institutes and communities that self-represent and self-narrate their cultural heritage. The decentralised format is inspired by around-the-world assemblies through which communities share in their own pathways to a politics of wholeness based on the principle that ’we can’t solve our crises using the same way of thinking that created them’ (Grassroots2Global).

Underpinning the GFA are collective ideation, decision-making and execution. Preparations take two years with the hosting communities meeting (bi)monthly to formulate the overall conceptual framework, thematic scopes, hosting communities, planning, budgeting and funding. Tasks are divided organically with smaller groups taking on different responsibilities (planning, budgeting, communication & production) according to the principle ‘by the communities, for the communities.’ Simultaneously, each hosting community decides on their own programme, content(s), format(s), language(s), aesthetics and participants according to its specific experiences and needs. Each hosting community welcomes local stakeholders, communities and audiences, on and offline, in a combination of local languages and English.