Fashion Graduate Italia: young designers showcase collections in Milan

Fashion Graduate Italia, a fashion week that showcases the designs of Italy's fashion talents, wraps up its 2023 edition today at Base Milan.

The event, which began on 24 October, is organised by Piattaforma sistema formativo moda ente del terzo settore (Ets), a hub that brings together Italian post-diploma training institutions and academies in the sector, and is sponsored by the Lombardy Region and the Municipality of Milan. The Piattaforma sistema formativo moda school community includes over 30 thousand students.

School community Platform fashion education system includes over 30 thousand students

Fashion Graduate Italia is a three-day event featuring fashion shows, talks, masterclasses, workshops and job placement. Special guests of this edition are students from the fashion and design universities of Sao Paulo and Toronto.

"Fashion graduate Italia has become an unmissable event within the Italian fashion calendar: in the last year Platform fashion education system (Piattaforma sistema formativo moda) Ets has worked side by side with all associated universities, academies and institutes to organise a phygital event that is even richer and open to an even wider audience of international viewers," Matteo Secoli, president of fashion school community Piattaforma sistema formativo moda Ets, explained in a release.

Schools participating in the event, this year titled 'Do You Remember the Future?', included Accademia Costume & moda, Accademia della moda Iuad, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Afol moda, Arsutoria school, Domus Academy, Iaad, Istituto d'arte applicata e design, Istituto europeo di design, Ied, Istituto Marangoni, Istituto Modartech, Istituto Secoli, and Naba, Nuova accademia di belle arti.

The community of schools of Platform fashion education system, today has more than 30 thousand students, 6,000 teachers and 45 campuses.

Students from Iuad, Iaad, Naba present designs

The Institute of Applied Art and Design Iaad participated in the 2023 edition of Fashion Graduate Italia. The collections of Alessia Fascio, Alice Bezzolato, Aurora Langella, Elisa Musso and Keti Aleksovka stood out on the runway. The five designers are graduates of the school in Textile and fashion design. The students brought to the runway "?????," a collection that starts with an analysis of the role of words and, in a broader sense, language in relation to today's society.

The topics addressed by Iaad students range from self-knowledge through others, to finding balance through thought change, to the influence and impact of words on our souls, to the evocation of lost values through encrypted language, to lightening the burden of life through therapy. Experimental cuts, shapes and workmanship transform fabrics into canvases of awareness on which our ideals are imprinted. The clothes come to life from the hues of experience, translated into a cohesive and incisive collection.

Naba, on the other hand, showcased the eight best collections of the two-year specialist program in Fashion design, created by students Carlotta Cilloni, Yuehan Dai, Arianna Dainelli, Luciana Gagliardi, Min Gao, Merve Karali, Meghana Govinda Reddy, Samia Charlotte Nelly Saadieh Jeanine Saad. The outfits featured an aesthetic narrative of creation that finds expression in the production of cultural, experimental and lab-based works and experiences.

The academy's story was also developed in the fashion showcase curated by Naba lecturer Luisa Cevese. The exhibition space showcased stories of craftsmanship, manual skills, techniques and innovation in the fields of textiles and knitwear, through the works of the students of the specialist degree in Textile design: Jingjing Chen, Yijie Liu, Elena Paiano, Alessia Romeo, Shuimiao Xie, Yingfang Zhang.

"Fashion graduate Italia has always been an important moment that allows for the creation of relevant connections between the educational system and the Italian fashion system. In this sphere, Naba students through their creativity have the opportunity to demonstrate once again how fashion culture is connected to the world around it,” Colomba Leddi, head of the fashion design programme at Naba said in statement.

”They experimented with new forms, materials and languages, including through the link between fashion and textile design, which in their intersections can allow students to obtain new knowledge and experiment with innovative ways and systems for fashion production,” the educator concluded.

The students of the Iuad Fashion Academy invited the audience to explore their true selves through their new collections. "[Humans] struggle with a disorder of emotions and suffering, making them a creature tormented by dualism, always poised between opposites fighting for supremacy: joy and pain, love and hate, strength and fragility. That's when the entire spectrum of human emotions is released, like a kaleidoscope of colors that creates harmony and substance," the students explained. The fashion show which took place yesterday, was entitled ‘Uncovered’.

The students who participated in the project were: Andrea di Giulio, Alessia Petito, Vincenzo Savinelli, Giandomenico Farella, Andrea Battaglia, Angelica Senatore, Danilo Vincenzo Grabeuil, Giuseppe Magnano, Giada Zanotti, Valentina Derudi, and Thomas Ferrarese.

Iuad, which today has locations in Naples and Milan, was founded with its first courses in the 1960s from an idea of Domenico Lettieri, a master of the art of tailoring, who in those years was concerned with creating a system to bring new life to the world of traditional dressmaking.

Even today, for over four decades now, the fashion academy has been working in the field of training in the disciplines of fashion design and communication, offering a range of training paths, from fashion and interior design to industrial pattern making, with a copyrighted system for all sectors of clothing (men's, women's, children's, casual, underwear, lingerie and corsetry, shirts) and footwear.

This article was originally published on FashionUnited.IT. Translation and edit from Italian into English by Veerle Versteeg.