Basket weaving, wood carving, plaster work — not the skills most young designers expect to hone ahead of fashion week. Yet this summer, five emerging talents from Germany travelled to the picturesque Cotswolds region of England to immerse themselves in these centuries-old disciplines, ahead of co-creating a collection that will be showcased during Berlin Fashion Week in January 2026.
For luxury brands, ‘craft’ has become one of the year’s most powerful marketing tools (alongside heritage) as brands have sought to elevate their image, justify price rises, and appeal to consumers that increasingly look for sustainability, authenticity and emotional connection. But the industry faces a paradox: while craftmanship plays well with luxury consumers, the craft and manufacturing workforce is ageing and few young people see it as a viable career path. As a result, certain artisan skills are at risk of disappearing.
Fashion Council Germany (FCG) aims to address both issues with its Fashion x Craft programme, now in its fourth year. This year’s edition introduced two notable changes: a requirement for the participants to design a joint collection to present in Berlin, and a new headline sponsor — Ebay Germany — bringing a more explicit focus on circular design and secondhand sourcing.
“We were constantly hearing that craft is disappearing and it’s not being valued enough. It’s all about AI and technology these days. So we came up with the idea of creating this project to teach some traditional skills,” says FCG CEO Scott Lipinski.
The 2025 cohort, selected from around 90 applicants, began with sustainable design workshops and brand networking in Berlin, before the two-week residency at Highgrove House, King Charles III’s Cotswolds estate — tapping into a ‘Made in the UK’ network that’s in the midst of a revival. Next, they will return to Germany for technology workshops, to start developing the collection remotely. From November, they will live and work together in Berlin to complete the collection, with support not just on creativity but on practical business foundations such as sourcing, pricing and logistics.
Ebay’s involvement signals that craft revival and circularity are no longer separate conversations in fashion. FCG has partnered with Ebay Germany on other projects, including recently launching Raum.Berlin, a three-day showcase for emerging fashion talent during Berlin Fashion Week, which debuted at its June edition. The Fashion x Craft partnership takes this a step further. “To create a more circular and sustainable fashion future, you need to think about products from design through to production,” explains Kirsty Keoghan, GM of European fashion at Ebay.
In a fashion industry where ‘craft’ often functions as a marketing buzzword and ‘circularity’ as a compliance target, programmes like Fashion x Craft are experimenting with how to make both more tangible. By teaching designers to adapt centuries-old skills to secondhand materials, aided by new technologies, they are preparing the next wave of designers who can bridge emotional storytelling with the operational realities of a lower impact supply chain.
Listening to the materials
Highgrove is one of several sites operated by The King’s Foundation, the charity established by King Charles III to promote education, sustainability, farming and traditional crafts. (One of its other sites, Dumfries House in Ayrshire, Scotland, is the home of The King’s Foundation’s Modern Artisan fashion programme.) Alongside teaching crafts such as wood carving, Highgrove hosts embroidery and millinery fellowships run in partnership by The King’s Foundation and Chanel.
The luxury retailer is unveiling the latest collection produced by its trainee artisans during a six-month residency in Scotland. Will it add momentum to the reshoring movement?
Lipinski says he considered a couple of local organisations in Germany to host the skills section of the Fashion x Craft programme, but settled on the idea of a residency in the UK because of the FCG’s long-standing relationship with The King’s Foundation (they co-host an annual student conference in Scotland), and because he wanted to let the designers “escape their normal environment”. He explains: “They are free to have that creativity explode and to fully focus on what they’re doing. And I’ve never seen facilities like those run by The King’s Foundation, nor met anyone comparable to the people that work here [at Highgrove]. They are so full of dedication.”
When I visit, the gardens make clear why the site is so well suited to such programmes. In the Stumpery — a Victorian-style grove of ferns and upturned tree stumps — a “wall of gifts” displays hand-carved architectural stone made by The King’s Foundation’s past students. Nearby, willow sculptures of woodland creatures by Yorkshire-based artist Emma Stothard stand between the trees. Even the fragrant kitchen garden, heavy with pears and plums, speaks to the value of local production — a concept increasingly relevant to supply chain resilience in fashion.
At their base — a cottage next to workshops on the outskirts of the gardens — the five Fashion x Craft designers present their early concepts. Some have reimagined basket weaving as wearable architecture, exploring how rigid natural materials like willow and ash could be applied to structured bags or bodices. Others have integrated craft skills such as wood carving, embroidery, screen-printing and natural dyeing into their primary disciplines, which range from tailoring to bobbin lace-making and laser-cutting.
“The Fashion x Craft programme allows participants to briefly pause their practice, essentially giving them an opportunity to assess the process of fashion making and reconsider the craft and skill involved in garment design and construction,” says Daniel McAuliffe, education hub director at The King’s Foundation. “This dovetails perfectly with our policy of supporting the next generation of artisans, whose work must be sustainable to protect our environment.”
For designer Jon Liesenfeld, who specialises in leather, working with unyielding materials was a creative jolt. “In fashion, I can form everything the way I want to and hide or work around any problems I have with the fabric,” he says. “But here, I had to work with the material and really listen to it.” This adaptable mindset will be needed among emerging designers, the tutors point out, as the industry continues to experiment with new materials, technologies and production methods.
This year, the residency also threads circularity into craft training. Designers are encouraged to work with secondhand garments, deadstock fabrics and leftover yarns sourced through Ebay. For young talents, this dual skill set is increasingly valuable: as brands face rising material costs and regulatory pressure to reduce waste, knowing how to integrate craft techniques into upcycled items, or use them to elevate deadstock materials, could be a differentiator.
From residency to runway — and beyond
As the five designers move into the collection development phase this autumn, the programme’s real measure of success will be long-term impact. Past alumni such as Julia Ballardt and Nico Verhaegen, whose label Milk of Lime is now a regular on the Berlin Fashion Week schedule, show how early-stage mentorship and access to networks can translate into sustainable careers. Others may choose different paths: opening stores, applying for grants, or pursuing further study at institutions like the Swedish School of Textiles, for example.
Ebay’s role, apart from providing an undisclosed amount of funding, is to help with mentorship and guidance on practical business areas such as sourcing and inventory management, using data to assess what sells, alongside logistics. As a platform, Ebay can also allow the designers to test the market quickly, without encountering high upfront costs. “It’s one thing coming up with ideas, but actually turning that into a business, that’s the really challenging bit,” says Ebay’s Keoghan.
For Lipinski, the goal is not to produce five identical brand founders, but to seed the next generation of creative leaders who understand both heritage techniques and contemporary market demands. “They don’t all have to have a fashion brand, present during Berlin Fashion Week and have a showroom in Paris,” he says. “There’s no single recipe for success.”
Aleksander Kudrischow, 26, fashion design graduate of HAW Hamburg
I’ve been a tutor at my university, and I’ve seen a lot of people having this mentality of ‘fuck everything that came before me’. They won’t even look at past examples. I get it and I think of artist Louise Bourgeois saying she wished she could unlearn everything she’s learnt. But in reality, you can’t create what you do without the knowledge you’ve already gained. And for me, it’s vital to preserve our humanity and creativity, rather than use AI to make everything simpler.
Laura De Sousa, 29, fashion design graduate of Lisbon University
I discovered laser-cutting while making modular Elizabethan collars during my bachelor’s degree. I loved creating a formula that could be replicated. I heard about the Fashion x Craft programme and thought it would be useful to learn new techniques and try to integrate them with the technologies I’m using. I’m interested in keeping the crafts alive, but I really like the idea of twisting them a little bit, turning them into something else. We are using materials or technologies we didn’t have 100 years ago, but applying the knowledge of our past generations.
Lennart Bohle, 26, certified tailor and graduate of Pforzheim University
My parents came from craftsmanship — my dad in upholstery, my mum sewing curtains — so I grew up surrounded by textiles. I believe there’s growing appreciation for craft, sparked partly by the pandemic and the DIY movement, but it’s a slow process to change mindsets. For me, the [process of] making carries memories. I want to gain more experience, perhaps in a couture house, then grow my own brand slowly, keeping craftsmanship central to my work.
Melanie Parzenczewski, 30, fashion design graduate of HTW Berlin
I discovered bobbin lace by chance after taking a short course after high school. I forgot about it until my fashion studies, where I began reinterpreting its traditional forms. Lace has stereotypes — granny doilies, weddings, boho — but I think it can be modern and edgy. It’s a craft that can’t be fully replicated by machines, and its knowledge is at risk of being lost. I’m interested in historical techniques, intricate patterns and using technology, like mathematical models, to innovate. My goal is to preserve and evolve lace, showing it as relevant and valuable.
Jon Liesenfeld, 24, fashion design graduate of AMD Düsseldorf
My first connection to craft was my grandfather, who was a car mechanic. Later, in fashion school and during an internship in Berlin, I discovered leather — its rigidness, emotional weight, organic feel and endless possibilities. I use low-impact sources like furniture leather, and combine it with contrasting materials like wood and wool. I want to stay close to the product and material, whether leading a design team or building my own brand, creating work that fosters deeper emotional connections with clothing. Craft is a dialogue — showing the process helps people value what they wear and keep it longer.
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