by MILAN – “I feel that we have a degree in fashion design 3.0,” said Stefania Valenti, managing director of Istituto Marangoni, on Tuesday evening, when she presented a new digital format developed by the school of fashion and design.
Called “I Am AI”, the project consisted of a fashion show that grouped the work of seven students from its international campuses who developed digital-only collections with the help of artificial intelligence. Presented in the metaverse space unveiled by Istituto Marangoni last year, the event aimed to overcome the geographical boundaries across the different schools of the institution and invite a global audience to participate in the experience, showing a different perspective at the same time on the graduates’ fashion shows and on the overall progress he has made in terms of offering new skills to students.
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Each fashion design graduate represented a different campus – from Milan, Florence, Paris, London, Mumbai, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China – and presented three looks digitally rendered in CLO3D, after exploring AI tools during their research and motivation processes. AI algorithms also played a key role in the art direction of the show, generating the various backgrounds that served as sets for each collection, for example.
“The internal commission selected the students with different criteria compared to those we generally apply to our traditional graduate shows,” said Valenti, pointing out that innovation was considered a key element of this process.
The immersive experience is open to all users from desktop or mobile devices. They can access the metaverse space of the school, see the show and also engage in the creative process behind each collection or interact with it through a gaming element, as they are invited to style their avatars with items from change different lines or backgrounds.
Users can also vote for their favorite collection, which will contribute to the selections of a jury of luxury professionals who are asked to evaluate the students’ work based on various criteria, including the best execution and customization better, among other things. The school will provide additional tuition to the winner, which will also facilitate opportunities to work with brands.
Istituto Marangoni already had a phygital format to celebrate the opening of its campus in Dubai last year, when the students’ fashion show was staged IRL and in the metaverse space through a 3D catwalk and realistic avatars of all models and looks.
Valenti emphasized the importance of the new project in providing students with even greater skills, further increasing their creativity as well as creating the possibilities and benefits that technology offers to both talent and young companies. For example, she commented on the positive implications in terms of sustainability – generating less waste during the creation of fashion prototypes, for one – and pushing talents to take risks. “It’s really encouraging bolder choices, they’re less afraid of making mistakes,” said Valentine.
“We see digital as a physical enhancement. These two worlds are no longer separate but must come together. They inspire each other, which encourages creative potential to the nth degree,” she said.
The executive said the school had already embarked on such a journey during the pandemic, when it revisited and updated courses to integrate new technological tools with the mission of further empowering talents in their training experience. “But the theory wasn’t enough – we felt they needed a proper gym to train and try out,” said Valentine.
Therefore, the school will soon launch laboratories in its metaverse space. If the pavilions accessible on the platform mainly included areas dedicated to gathering information on courses and showing the work of students and the best projects in partnership with companies, now it is going to offer digital counterparts to classes such as making pattern, product design. , and visual merchandising, among others.
“Last year our metaverse space was like a window, now we’re bringing classes into it,” Valenti said, as an interactive space exhibit recalled Istituto Marangoni’s classrooms in its colors. She pointed out how each student will have their own avatar and that they can all attend the same lesson from different campuses, releasing the opportunity to network across physical boundaries.
Accessible via desktop and VR, the immersive classes will have a high element of “gamification to explain how things are made”, as in the pattern making course leveraging a digital library of 45 fashion patterns typically taught in fashion design . students in their first year.
“We think they engage more with this approach. At the end, gaming is semiotics, their language, which is completely different from our language,” said Valenti.
The executive pointed out that another goal is to invite more brands to try out the school and its students. She emphasized the overall effort being made by Istituto Marangoni aimed at responding to the industry’s demand for better professionals, equipped with advanced digital and technological tools and capable of bringing innovation to companies.
For one, a master’s degree course in “digital design for immersive experiences” launched last year caught Ferrari’s attention. The brand asked students to imagine a new concept for a temporary experiential store in Milan that could have interactive elements. A relationship with Poltrona Frau challenged interior design students to imagine Martian house concepts developed in the context of limited resources, in an exercise that could push their creativity to find alternative solutions and therefore also design real houses in a more sustainable way .
In addition to the aforementioned campuses, Istituto Marangoni has a school in Miami, offering a full program of programs to celebrate Art Basel.
Founded in 1935, Istituto Marangoni is controlled by Galileo Global Education Italia, the Italian branch of the private international higher education company GGE. Among the private schools operating in the fields of fashion, art and design under the umbrella of GGE Italia are Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti – better known as NABA – and Domus Academy.
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