OTTO VON BUSCH is Associate Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons, The New School for Design. He holds a Ph.D. in design from the School of Design and Craft at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and was previously Professor of Textiles at Konstfack, Stockholm. More of his work can be found at www.selfpassage.info.

In his research, Otto explores the emergence of a new hacktivist designer role in fashion, where the designer engages participants to reform fashion from a phenomenon of dictations, anxiety, and fear into a collective experience of empowerment and liberation. Taking inspiration from various forms of social activism, this is an engaged and collective process of enablement, creative resistance and DIY practice, where a community shares and develops new capabilities of craftsmanship for social engagement. In this practice, the aim is not to make fashionable goods, as much as to cultivate the social conditions by which users become fashion-able.