Stockholm university

Nora combines her passion for fashion in both teaching and writing

As a fashion writer, Nora Veerman gets day to day examples of what’s going on in the fashion world to pass on to her students. She’s found the perfect combination of journalism and teaching and feels they really enrich each other. The basics of fashion history and theory she got during the Master’s programme in fashion studies at Stockholm University.

Nora Veerman
Photo: Lidewij Mulder

As a teenager, Nora dreamt of becoming a fashion designer. Before she started studying at university, she didn’t know fashion theory was something you could actually study. It took a long time to find that out.

– I looked at a fashion design academy, but it didn’t feel right. I was more into reading and writing than creating objects. My mum said I could try art history instead, and that’s why I started the Bachelor’s programme in art history at the University of Amsterdam. I took a course in fashion history and loved it!

After receiving her bachelor’s degree, Nora did an internship at MoMu, a fashion museum in Antwerp. There she got to know about the Master’s programme in fashion studies at Stockholm University.

– I thought “this is probably the thing for me”. There were a few other universities offering fashion studies, but not many. The choice for Stockholm was made fairly quickly. What I loved about the Stockholm programme was that it was interdisciplinary, focusing on multiple aspects of fashion: culture, economics, philosophy, statistics…You could do a lot of separate courses which I find enriching.

 

Different perspectives thanks to an international class

Nora started the Master’s programme in fashion studies in 2017. Her class was a quite small group of 15–20 people with mainly international students.

– People tend to flock to the few master’s programmes that exist, so my classmates were from all over the world: the UK, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Turkey, India, Canada…People had different views depending on their backgrounds. It was so nice to learn different perspectives on fashion. For most of us it was the first time we got a proper introduction to fashion history and theory. It was really exciting to get into this field and to start seeing different ways to approach it.

It took some time for Nora to get used to Stockholm. In Amsterdam, everything is close: friends, cafés, the university. In Stockholm, she lived quite far away from university. But she found a way to solve it.

– I bought a bike – of course, coming from the Netherlands. I found a Dutch bike selling guy who sold me this amazing 80’s race bike that I took everywhere. I love the landscape in Stockholm. The water and the huge parks. I loved that there was so much nature. I went for walks, picnics, in the city, at Djurgården and close to my home in Årsta. The winter was dark but it was spectacular to live in a country with so much snow and lights.

During her first year at the programme she was busy getting used to everything. But during her second year she moved close to university and stayed in a dorm.

– I became a member of the rowing club and did a lot of sports outside. I’m social and love to be around people. I was a bit of a shame that I got into that real social part at the end of my studies. I started to feel truly at home. I was actually really sad when I had to leave.

 

Started teaching after graduating

During her studies, Nora had kept in touch with her former teacher in fashion studies at the University of Amsterdam. The teacher was planning to create a minor programme in fashion studies, and asked Nora if she wanted to assist her. Nora started working for her already during her second year.

– After graduating, I got a part-time position teaching at the University of Amsterdam. I’ve been coordinating and teaching on that programme ever since. It’s a part-time job, so I also work as a journalist and editor at FashionUnited, which is a global fashion network and a news medium. I write fashion news, background stories and do interviews about two days a week, and I also do other writing work as a freelancer. So I’ve been combing teaching and writing from the start.

 

Fashion a way of understanding other fields

Nora makes use of what she learned at the master’s programme every day, as she says it gave her all the basics about fashion history and fashion theory.

– A very important thing for me was that my studies was a way to verge from art history into other disciplines. In the master’s programme fashion is studied from different perspectives. For instance, I got to know more about philosophy and economics from a fashion point of view. I also took extra courses, like modernist literature, transnational ethnography, middle eastern studies and arts and gender. To me this was really exciting as I could see the value of mixing these things, a kind of cross-fertilization.

The more Nora finds out about fashion and everything related to it, the more she realises there is to learn.

– I started with fashion studies but I ended up as a bit of an ethnographer as well. The programme was not that much of an end station for me, but a start for into verging into other fields. That was a great learning experience for me, and a good experience to pass on to my students. Fashion is still something people think is superficial, they don’t see the use of it. But knowing how people dress and why says so much about our society.

 

Enjoys combining different ways of working with fashion

Nora hopes to continue doing a combination of things in her career, like writing, researching and educating.

– Journalism and teaching at university really enrich each other. Journalism teaches me a lot about what goes on in the fashion world everyday and what people find important in their daily life, and research gives me background. I’d still want to work with museums sometime, where I would get to work with actual objects. I’d also like to pursue a PhD on the condition that I still can mix a little of all these different things. It’s important for me personally to really stay in touch with what’s happening, so I’d have to find a way to create a PhD position which allow those worlds to come together. The fashion field is still evolving and there is so much to learn.

Want to know more about the Master’s programme in fashion studies?

 

Contact

Alumni Relations: alumni@su.se

On this page