In the last few years we have often seen some institutions offering fashion and design courses being pumped up by the media. Yet, we have also seen these schools producing graduates concentrating their creative efforts on conceptual collections that maybe pleased the celebrity their school managed to place in the front row, but didn't display great tailoring skills nor any talent for textile interventions. Despite its fame, the Institut Français de la Mode (IFM) in Paris hasn't instead appeared so much on fashion publications and sites, nor its graduates were ever praised as "the next big thing". But, maybe, this aspect allowed its students to focus on their work without feeling the pressures of the media and concentrate on developing intriguing textile experiments.
The current IFM is the result of the 2019 merger between the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne (ECSCP), founded in 1927, and the Institut Français de la Mode (IFM), founded by Pierre Bergė in 1986. When the merger occurred, the institution, that preserved the name IFM, announced it aimed at becoming the world's "best fashion school" and rival more famous academies such as Central St Martins.
Four years after that merger, its promise of becoming not one among the many fashion schools, but "the best one", may becoming a reality, as proved by the runway for the IFM's Master of Arts program that on Monday kicked off Paris Fashion Week.
The MA program reunites two souls - the school's fashion management course and the artisanal tradition of the Chambre Syndicale school - and this was clear from the designs on the runway.
Comprising collections created by 25 international students graduating in fashion design and knitwear, the Paris runway was very focused on materials and textile elaborations, while tackling at the same time themes such as sustainability and inclusivity.
The opening designs - cute and frilly tiered and ruffled knitted mini-dresses of the sort you may see on British artist Grayson Perry - looked innocent, naive and cute. Yet, looking better in some cases they revealed disquieting images and motifs.
Created with the support of yarn manufacturer Loro Piana, the collection by French-Chilean student Shanon Poupard featured whimsical dresses with jacquard renditions of black warplanes dropping bombs over a field of flowers, nuclear explosions and bomb-shaped bags with lit fuses. These decorative elements added an ominous aura to the collection.
"My collection studies the infantilization of reality as we respond to current traumas such as war and climate crisis," the young designer commented in her collection statement.
Shanon Poupard is a winner of the 2022 Loro Piana Knit Design Award 2022 that she shared with another IFM graduate, Po Chieh Chiu, who created for this show braided and ribbed sweaters matched with bleached bubble knits print denim pants. Granny square tiles were also reinvented in this collection and employed to create a sort of fractal effect on a sweater.
Among the graduates, there was also a consistent contingent of South Korean students: Eugene Oh recreated with denim elements from Elizabethan costumes, such as elaborate trellis-like stitching incorporating pearls and a denim doublet matched with a finely pleated miniskirt (a micro version of Elizabethan canions - that is, breeches).
His 3D printed armour dress with knitted inserts was instead a collaboration with another graduate, Tatjana Haupt, who currently designs knitwear at Kenzo and who provided the knitwear pieces for this collection.
Gookhyun Lee developed a collection entitled "Romantic Army" with exaggerated tailored details and pastel prints. His suits seemed to have a feminine twist about them, but the designer built around the shoulders gigantic robotic see-through structures or pointed spikes, elements that distorted the silhouette. All the models were wearing or carrying metal helmets.
The emphasis on the shoulders was a reference to authority maybe, and the helmets reminded people that South Korean men must spend two years as army conscripts (fashion graduates included).
Chaewon Song focused on dresses that incorporated rows of three-dimensional loops that created a dynamically optical effect around the bodies of the model, almost a glitch distortion.
Italian Cristian Rocco Rizzo was inspired instead by interior design and upholstery: crocheted pants were assembled from a selection of doilies; a sweater was decorated with metres of tassel fringes that looked like leftovers from an upholstery shop (the course requires to develop sustainable practices); the torn fabric on a padded pink damask coat revealed a sofa underneath; the sleeves of another design came in deep shades of green and blue velvet that looked as if they had been ripped off an armchair.
Rather than punk studs, a jacket incorporated upholstery tacks and, on a linen pillow case decorated with gigliuccio embroidery, the young designer left a message to summarise the collection – "I built a home for you and me".
Blynda Chen embellished her jackets and trousers with hundreds of fabric holly-like leaves, some of them forming geometrical motifs; Justine Junot developed knitted silk armours of braided elements. The graduate calls these elements forming intricate swirls around the body (created with the support of Italian textile manufacturer Servizi e Seta) snakes.
Eun Pyo Hong closed the show with her wedding dresses made from knitted filigree lace inspired by 16th-century Dutch paintings and costumes, some of them multi-layered like a cake and incorporating cartwheel ruffles made with Emilicotoni's TPU yarn, a silicon-covered cotton yarn that, heat-pressed can become stiffer. As the looks were rather time-consuming to make, Bettina Sam, a knitting atelier in Monaco, offered Hong some help.
Tecnically speaking, one of the best collection was Ju Bao's: entitled "Annihilation" it featured several garments and items that looked as if they were made of faded and decayed denim, but they were actually made with a laddered knitwear technique Bao invented and made with Sato Seni yarns.
Reaching this level is not easy, but ten IFM students a year get one-to-one tutoring from highly-experienced knitwear designer Adam Jones (Director of Knitwear for both Master in Art and Bachelor in Art program at IFM; he worked at Kenzo before becoming the director of knitwear for Christian Dior) and also have access to advanced machinery.
As a whole, the runway showed there's hope, but also proved that younger generations have been impacted by the dark times we are all living in (see the bombs and echoes of the war mixed with sugary moods) and that they are also willing to learn time-consuming techniques if they are passionate about what they are doing.
There were certainly some graduates who did better than others, but two winning points emerged from this runway: IFM fosters teamwork and collaborations and students are usually matched with a company or manufacturer that will help them developing their textile elaborations. The former pushed graduates in different disciplines to work together (pattern-cutting and accessory students who worked with the fashion graduates were also credited in the footnotes of each collection). Working with a company, and learning more about what goes on in a factory, allowed the graduates to develop innovative designs and elevate their collections (but learning about materials and techniques from a company may also help students understanding better which path they would like to take in future and if they would like to work "behind the scenes" of the industry, which can be an equally exciting job).
For the time being, though, the road is still long for them: after this joyous moment, they will have to go back to work on the rest of their graduation collection, present it to a jury of professionals, write a research thesis, and do a six-month internship at a French fashion house. By now they will have learnt that fashion never stops.
Comments