Istituto Secoli participated in Fashion Graduate Italia 2023, the annual week dedicated to emerging fashion talents and organized by Piattaforma sistema formativo moda ETS, a hub including the best post-high school diploma Italian educational institutions and institutes in the fashion industry. Candiani Denim provides fabrics to Istituto Secoli for its students’ projects.
Designer To Watch 2023: new fashion talents bring their capsule collections to the catwalk
The most important event for Istituto Secoli was the usual fashion show Designer To Watch, in which the capsule collections of some of the best-graduated students walked the catwalk for the first time, showing the skills and the knowledge of these emerging talents, which blend research, experimentation, and contemporary design. 42 outfits made by eight designers modeled in total.
Giovanni Fotia, Transition
Three different elements inspired the collection: Sicily, where the designer comes from; London, which represents a break with the past and a new beginning to Giovanni Fotia; the artist Agostino Bonalumi, of whom plastic artworks visually and conceptually refer to static and dynamic nature and hold the meaning of the word transition in an abstract way. The volumes, which recreate those in Bonalumi’s works, are paired with fabrics such as jersey, wool, and cotton and details that remind of the farming tradition but, at the same time, blend with bright colors such as yellow and the irreverent punk aesthetics, made with ripped and stained fabrics, like they represent a scream.
Sofia Ugoccioni, Intimamente
The designer wondered what intimacy means in all its nuances, which include everyday life, silence, gestures, and memories. Sofia Ugoccioni invites everyone to search for their own dimension of intimacy and give it their own personal meaning.
Gabriele Fabris, Performing a Ritual
Gabriele Fabris’ men’s collection, in which some garments were entirely hand-made, was inspired by the movie The Color of Pomegranates by Sergej Parajanov, distinguished by an entrancing and visually rich atmosphere and extraordinary colors. The film mixes tradition and symbology, and gestures, made with liturgy and solemnity, acquire a holy nature. The designer focused on those rituals which appear to permeate everyday routines.
Margherita Aureli, Nothing There
Margherita Aureli wants to create a reaction and destabilize watchers with her women’s capsule. The designer chose unusual and atypical subjects and started from their projections and their relationship with them. Her idea is that we are unwillingly attracted by undefined, peculiar, and anonymous things; hence, real elements dematerialize and become feelings and movements. This sensorial path ends with the different perceptions that integrate and interact to create a dynamic vision of reality.
Sara Del Bene, Scegli con cura le parole da (non) dire
Words explaining the meaning of other words are the protagonist of Sara Del Bene’s collection. The designer was inspired by Gino Strada’s text La favola, which tells kids the importance of their use and how even the most unconscious terms have to be selected and measured to allow others to get an understanding that goes beyond simply listening.
Paul Albert Magsino, Temendo l’ignoto
Paul Albert Magsino’s men’s collections build on the concept of chaos linked to our thoughts and the fear of losing ourselves among those doubts that turn into nightmares and panic and hold us back while we are committed to satisfying the expectations of other people. His garments are used as fragments of an unnatural composition of ideas that represents the distortion of prejudices about ourselves, which limit the possibility of change and trap reality in a grotesque ensemble.
Massimiliano Scrinzi, Fragmented Whole
Massimiliano Scrinzi started from the concept of the word identity, counterposing the dictionary definition, which describes it as a characterizing element that does not change over time, and the vision of the experimental singer Arca, who thinks we all have different inner selves, without denying belonging as a whole. Here starts the internal search of the identities, stratified, dismantled, and multifaced, which continuously flow alternating controlled self-narrations and rash gestures. The collection takes, hence, new identities, blending and transforming.
Anna e Silvia Cristofolini, R_evolution
According to Anna e Silvia Cristofolini, the reality around us continues to change, while we search for our stability. In this journey, there are no solitary entities, but there is a we, representing the visual trip to the subconscious revolution. Evolution is the gradual change that happens by observing how our everyday decisions influence our being, while revolution is the needed energy to understand what appears to be fragmented using shapes and colors to visualize the unpredictable world we live in. We includes the complexity that equates us and makes us share our lives. We are much more than we think, and we are not alone.
