The Critical Look section will reflect on the dominant narratives of the industry, aiming to rethink the relationship between fashion, community, responsibility, and sustainability. This section will feature Youth (Homecoming) (2024) and Youth (Hard Times) (2024), part of the Youth trilogy by filmmaker Wang Bing, a documentary project analyzing the impact of the fashion industry on new generations. The trilogy explores how young creators, workers, and communities engage with a transforming system, highlighting the dialogue between creative aspirations, social awareness, and material production conditions. The first part of the trilogy, Youth (Spring) (2023), premiered at Moritz Feed Doc 2023.

Also included is Teenage (2013) by Matt Wolf, based on Jon Savage’s iconic foundational book, a film that considers adolescence more as a social and commercial construct than a natural biological stage: teenagers were “created” by society, which needed to label this group in order to control and categorize it. African Styles (2023) by Rolf Lambert, Emmanuelle Wagner, and Rabi Yansané challenges the false notion of a single “African style,” asserting the same plurality recognized in Europe, and presenting African design as both an intellectual and luxury industry, acknowledged in Paris and Milan. Stoff / Lace Relations (2025) by Anette Baldauf, Joana Adesuwa Reiterer, Chioma Onyenwe, and Katharina Weingartner examines how the textile trade was key to colonial routes, influencing global power dynamics, the history of extractivism, and the unequal exchange between Europe and its colonies. Finally, MAISON the FAUX: While the World Burns (2023) by Anduo Lucia uses fashion to satirize the industry itself, presenting not as a conventional brand but as a “fictional institution” that questions the values of luxury.