The fashion system is becoming a more complex structure where many challenges and transformations emerge. To face them, the industry requires a wide range of professional profiles within the industry: fashion designers, brand managers, marketing and communication experts, art directors, trend researchers, visual merchandisers, photographers, stylists, event planners… the possibilities and opportunities are endless.
The complexity of these transformations not only relies on the new roles within the system but especially on the broader visions and values emerging in society. There is an urgency to create a common and global ethics path that will bring the fashion system into a more conscious, fair, and inclusive industry.
The younger generations of creative people are aware of this urgency and face them with innovation. They have been growing up in a context full of uncertainty and transformation. IED Istituto Europeo di Design, with its 11 seats around the world, shows an example of projects responding to today’s global challenges: sustainability, technology, inclusivity, new media, and craftsmanship. Through workshops, events, projects and collaborations with different organizations and institutions, IED explores and defines the transformations for tomorrow’s society.
Fashion garments that come back to earth after their usability, virtual environments to communicate emergent fashion brands, traditional sartorial alterations for avant-garde fashion collections, or powerful storytelling messages to confront today’s mass media reality, are some of the proposals by IED Fashion students. A generation of new designers with values, voices, and compromise.
REGENERATIVE FASHION DESIGN
The fashion system’s impact on the planet it’s worrying. From a problem, new solutions appear: upcycling, biomaterials, natural pigments… the options are increasing.
What if we bring regenerate design into fashion? Is it possible to wear a living organism that transforms itself after its usability? This was the question that Micaela Clubourg’s project Recover and Regrow made and she is still researching with her company Studio Cumbre after studying for the Master in Sustainable Fashion Technology at IED Barcelona. She believes that together, we create a harmonious fusion of tradition and innovation, where the past is celebrated, the present is elevated, and the future brings endless sustainable possibilities.
VIRTUAL PR AGENCIES
Fashion shows have always been an essential communication tool to promote the design studios’ results and the core values of a brand. But it is not the only tool that companies have nowadays: technology has become an important ally. IED Madrid student Diego Barbadilla was aware of this new opportunity and created a virtual PR agency inside the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons. By digitalizing the fashion collections of 4 emergent Spanish designers, Wonderland PR wants to promote new fashion brands in a completely new environment.
FASHION VIRALITY
In the last years, fashion films have been very popular but as well as fashion in films: cinema, music videos, Youtube, Tik-Tok… in a world dominated by telecommunications, any visual proposal can become viral and shape the next fashion trends.
That was the starting point of Sinapsis Fashion Film by IED Torino. Inspired by an over-controlled society, fashion design proposals are showcased in a dystopian reality of today’s society criticizing the mass information and the news TV Programs where Fashion -with a capital F- dominates the headlines.
COWS ATTACKS!
The power of fashion is real and it can help to overcome fears, empower people and shake the status quo. That was the idea behind IED Madrid’s student Juan del Rey with Cows Attacks!
The collection mixes the iconic cow print design with the alien movies from the 80’s creating powerful creatures that came to the world to express themselves: gender, size, or ethnicity aren’t part of the conversation.
TRADITIONAL SARTORIAL ALTERATIONS
Italian Design is a reference worldwide for its quality and craftsmanship. Over many years, tradition has been an important part of Italian culture, and preserving it is a big part of IED DNA. This attention to the past allows fashion designers to define the future and that is what the fashion collection Divit by Luca di Prà, IED Milano student, explores. Based on archetypes of classic men’s clothing and their relative occasions of use (formal coats, tailored jackets, and starched collar shirts), this graduate fashion collection shows unexpected changes in sartorial clothing.
These examples are a rich kaleidoscope of the reality that many IED students face during their academic journey allowing them to enter with innovative proposals in the fashion industry. Projects reflecting today’s transformations and challenges and proposing new opportunities and solutions to build a better world in the fields of Fashion Design and Styling, Accessories and Jewelry Design, Fashion Communication and Management, and Creative Art Direction.
Source: Fashionista.com
