Silke Hofmann

Born in Frankfurt am Main/Germany in 1972, currently based in Berlin/Germany.

Silke Hofmann is a clothing design researcher with a focus on diverse and underserved clothing wearer needs. She studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York/USA (B. A.) and Central Saint Martins, London/United Kingdom (M. A.). Her design background is in the pret-a-porter industry.

In her current project embrace she explores the aesthetic and ergonomic breast support clothing needs of individuals affected by breast cancer in collaborative design processes. embrace aims to expand interpretations of breast support clothing beyond normative sizing systems by translating unique body topologies and wearer-specific clothing needs into a needs-based clothing design framework.

Iterations of embrace have been exhibited at Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven/Netherlands (2020) and Ars Electronica Festival, Linz/Austria (2021).

Her ongoing practice-driven PhD at the Royal College of Art, London, was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK. She has been a visiting researcher at the Kyoto Institute of Technology (KYOTO D-Lab, 2017 to 2018) and participated in the London Design Festival (2018 and 2019). Her clothing design research has been funded by the European Social Fund (DesignFarm Berlin, 2020), the European Commission (S+T+ARTS, Re-FREAM, 2021) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media of Germany (CIRCE, Creative Impact Fund, 2023).