Overview
In order to renew the discipline of fashion design and to make it relevant for the future, students will delve into the origins of fabric to elevate their final product and give it greater social and cultural significance. Textiles, fashion and couture need designers with an intrinsic understanding of all the creative processes, able to charge clothes with an almost animistic energy.
The sequel of steps from farm to fashion will empower a new generation of thinkers that demand change by creating fully inclusive designs, concerned with their indigenous roots, their current location, their projected targets and their future as universal creatives. Harvesting the accumulation of a multitude of artistic endeavors, changing the cynical for the critical and the ephemeral for the elemental, nourishing the now impoverished fields of fashion. Making fashion kind.
Graduates can engage in all steps of creation, from color to couture and from fiber to fashion, following their passion, becoming part of the fashion and textile community. From craft to high tech and from brutalist to polished, the intuitive expressions of the mind will form the next idiom of clothing design, talking textiles above all else.
From fiber to volume, innovation and sustainability are embedded in the entire process where the inclusion of textiles is the trigger for talent to bloom.
Course
The Master in Textiles from Farm to Fabric to Fashion in partnership with Lidewij Edelkoort aims to educate exceptional creative individuals that want to change the course of fashion history and aim to save the planet while saving grace. Allowing style to conquer neglect. Willing to deepen the discourse of design and open it up to all opportunities that enrich the roster of materials, to enjoy all the techniques of embellishment and to farm fashion as an organic culture that invites the world to engage in its strength and beauty.
Your mentors will guide you on this passage from material to expression to fashion and challenge you to experience your own metamorphosis, from budding creative to blooming talent. Our course will consider each individual on their own merit, bringing your skills to fruition with insight and compassion.
Lecturers are chosen from diverse design practices and outstanding professionals will be invited to be visiting residents, inspiring and empowering the department’s progress from within. Students will learn with a studio-based, hands-on approach, enriched with field trips and exhibition visits. All supported with critical theoretical knowledge of archaeology, anthropology and history. Including a final project and manifesto, this will amount to 1400 contact hours over two years, for the obtainment of 160 credits.
You will have access to a fully equipped department building in Scandicci, located close to central Florence, with looms, jacquard machine, knitting machines, spinning tools, embroidery machines, and sewing machines. A wet room will be designed for dyeing and washing. Research can be conducted at the Polimoda Library in Villa Favard, which houses the most significant collection of fashion and related subjects in Italy.
Mentorship
Mentors share their knowledge, motivation and resources with students throughout the program and represent an important part in the educational trajectory of each student. The course will have three masters to mentor its students.
Lidewij Edelkoort
Trend forecaster and Founder of Trend Union / Studio Edelkoort
Lidewij Edelkoort is a well-known forecaster of trends and society. She is a colour designer, publisher and design curator. An educator at heart, she directed the Design Academy Eindhoven for ten years, initiated the School of Form in Poland and is the former Dean of Hybrid Design at the New School/Parsons. She is widely acclaimed for writing the Anti-Fashion Manifesto that still remains relevant since being published in 2014. As a founding partner of the Master in Textiles from Farm to Fabric to Fashion, she will combine her critical insights in shaping another, kinder environment for students, enlightening them with in depth knowledge along the different steps of creation.
Linda Loppa
Advisor of Strategy and Vision at Polimoda
Linda Loppa is one of the most respected scholars of fashion design and theory in the world today. She was responsible for the radical fashion design department of Antwerp’s Academy of Fine Arts that fostered the talent of some of the most famous designers of our times. Her next big body of work involved turning Polimoda into the well-known international institute it has become. She is the writer of several books on education and fashion and continues to inspire future generations of aspiring designers and scholars with her innate sense of our epoch. She will mentor the students and use her intuition to discover and stimulate budding design talents.
Philip Fimmano
Director at Trend Union / Studio Edelkoort
Philip Fimmano is a trend analyst and design consultant, contributing to Trend Union’s forecasting books, magazines and strategic studies for international companies in fashion, textiles, interiors and lifestyle. In 2011, Fimmano co-founded Talking Textiles with Li Edelkoort; an ongoing initiative to promote awareness and innovation in textiles through touring exhibitions, a trend publication, a design prize and free educational programmes – including New York Textile Month, a citywide festival celebrating textile creativity each September. He is the co-author of the design book A Labour of Love (Lecturis, 2020) and the co-founder of the World Hope Forum, a new platform for creative community building. In addition to co-founding the Farm to Fabric to Fashion textile masters, Fimmano is also the mentor of Polimoda’s Fashion Trend Forecasting masters. He serves on several boards: for the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, the Xtant heritage textile festival in Mallorca, and the Creative Council for all of Gap Inc.’s brands, advising the group on innovation and sustainable practice.
Curriculum
This course is structured around four learning semesters, adding up to a radical and holistic approach to design.
- Farm: to develop knowledge and gain insight into the practices leading to the harvesting of animal and plant fiber, the crafting of yarns and the preparations for weaving
- Fabric One: to bring yarns into construction through weaving, knitting, crochet and lacemaking. Designing an original personal archive of qualities as the basis of collections to be made in the second year (and throughout your lifetime)
- Fabric Two: designing and developing a personal vision of cloth and clothes with studies of embellishments such as embroideries, patchworks, jacquard and printing. A series of textiles to explore your personal quest in order to choose direction for the final phase of study
- Fashion: bringing all acquired knowledge and experiences together into a comprehensive and creative vision of your view of the future of fashion. Dedicating textiles through draping and pattern making in order to create a unique collection of clothes.
Requirements
In order to be eligible for this course, you will need to be selected after the admission process.
During the application you are required to upload a portfolio including:
- A manifesto on your moral beliefs and creative philosophy, what you expect from fashion and textiles in the future
- An overview of your previous work with samples and photos
Basic requirements are:
- Curriculum Vitae (CV) with motivation letter
- English language proficiency
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent
Careers
Based on individual character and acquired skills, you can become the next:
- Farmer shepherding your own animals
- Farmer reviving old processes into new textiles
- Farmer integrating agriculture and textile design
- Farmer designing and producing innovative bio yarns
- Farmer manufacturing your own production
or:
- Fabric Designer for the textile and fashion industry
- Fabric Researcher for an interesting brand
- Fabric Craftsperson, working as an Independent Designer
- Fabric Buyer for volume or luxury fashion houses
- Fabric Innovator for yet to be conceptualized products
or:
- Fashion Designer who fully integrates textiles
- Fashion Designer developing couture qualities
- Fashion Futurist working on material innovation
- Fashion Outsider proposing radical ways of working
- Fashion Sustainability Specialist and Consultant
