MILAN — “I feel like we are stepping into fashion design 3.0,” Stefania Valenti, managing director of Istituto Marangoni, said Tuesday evening as she presented a new digital format developed by the fashion and design school.
The project, called “I Am Artificial Intelligence,” consisted of a fashion show grouping the work of seven students from their international campus who developed exclusively digital collections with the help of artificial intelligence. Presented in Istituto Marangoni’s metaverse space, which was inaugurated last year, the aim of the event is to transcend geographical boundaries between the institution’s different schools and invite a global audience to participate in the experience, as well as graduates’ fashion shows and overall progress in offering new skills to students.
More from WWD
Each fashion design graduate represented a different campus, hailing from Milan, Florence, Paris, London, Mumbai, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China, and presented three digitally crafted looks in CLO3D after exploring AI tools during their research and inspiration process. Artificial intelligence algorithms also played a key role in the artistic direction of the show, for example by creating different backdrops that served as the sets for each collection.
“Students were selected by an internal commission with different criteria compared to the criteria we generally apply for our traditional graduate shows,” Valenti said, underlining that innovation was seen as an important element in this process.
The immersive experience is available to all users from desktop or mobile devices. They can access the school’s metaverse, see the show, and also examine the creative process behind each collection or interact through a gamification element; because they are invited to style their avatars or change backgrounds with elements from different series.
Users can also vote for their favorite collection, which will contribute to their preferences where a jury of professionals from the luxury industry are asked to evaluate the students’ work against different criteria, including best practice and personalization, among others. The winner will be given extra tutoring by the school, which will also facilitate opportunities to work with brands.
Istituto Marangoni was already toying with a phygital format to celebrate the opening of its Dubai campus last year; a student fashion show was staged both IRL and in the metaverse via a 3D catwalk and realistic avatars of each model and look.
Valenti emphasized the importance of the new project in terms of providing students with more skills, further increasing their creativity, and proving the opportunities and benefits that technology offers both young talents and companies. For example, it boasted positive results in terms of sustainability (less waste produced during the creation of fashion prototypes, for example) as well as encouraging talent to take risks. “This really encourages bolder choices, they’re less afraid of making mistakes,” Valenti said.
“We see digitality as an enhancement of the physical. These two worlds are no longer separate, but they must come together. “By nurturing each other, they ignite creative potential immensely,” he said.
The administrator said the school had already embarked on such a journey during the pandemic, revisiting and updating courses to integrate new technology tools with the mission of further empowering talent in their educational experiences. “But theory wasn’t enough; we felt they needed a suitable gym to train and experiment,” Valenti said.
Therefore, the school will soon launch laboratories in the metaverse field. So far, accessible pavilions on the platform have mainly included areas dedicated to collecting information about courses and showcasing the work of top students and projects carried out in partnership with companies; Now it will offer digital equivalents to courses such as pattern making and product design. and visual merchandising, among others.
“Last year our metadata space was like a window, now we’re bringing the classes into it,” Valenti said in a demo showing an interactive space that recalls Istituto Marangoni’s classrooms with its colors. He noted how each student will have their own avatar and they can all attend the same lecture from different campuses, opening up the opportunity for networking beyond physical boundaries.
Immersive classes, accessible via desktop and VR, will have a high level of “gamification to explain how things are done” element, as will the pattern-making course, which will draw from a digital library of 45 fashion patterns typically taught in fashion design. students in their first year.
“We think this approach will involve them more. After all, gaming is semiotics, their language is completely different from ours,” Valenti noted.
The manager underlined that another goal is to increasingly invite brands to conduct experiments on schools and students. He emphasized that the overall effort made by Istituto Marangoni aims to answer the industry’s demand for better professional figures who are equipped with advanced digital and technological tools and can bring innovation to companies.
First, a master’s course on “digital design for immersive experiences” launched last year caught Ferrari’s attention. The brand asked students to design a new concept for an experimental temporary store in Milan that could have interactive elements. A collaboration with Poltrona Frau challenged interior design students to imagine Mars home concepts developed in the context of limited resources, an exercise that could increase their creativity in finding alternative solutions and therefore designing real homes more sustainably.
In addition to the campuses mentioned, Istituto Marangoni has a school in Miami and is currently offering a full slate of programs to celebrate Art Basel.
Founded in 1935, Istituto Marangoni is controlled by Galileo Global Education Italia, the Italian branch of the international private higher education company GGE. Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, better known as NABA, and Domus Academy are among the private schools operating in the fields of fashion, art and design under the umbrella of GGE Italia.
The best of WWD