As every year, the IFA Paris Bachelor in Fashion Design & Technology Graduation fashion show took place at the end of the Paris Mens Fashion Week. 14 of the best students’ final collections were selected among all graduates, 10 days before the show by a jury consisting of fashion professionals. Among the members of the jury were Lucille Clothilde Mossimann, designer at Marine Serre (LVMH 2017 designer contest award winner), Hanna Lane from Redress who organizes the Ecochic sustainable fashion contest, Thouria El Hassouni, photo stylist for specialized magazines such as Pansy, Yoko magazine, Jute Magazine or Vogu The fashion show was also hosting special guest designer this season: a collection of Roshani Limbu from Solent University in Southampton, with which IFA Paris is preparing a partnership, as well as the collections of 6 students from the IFA Paris Shanghai campus, who had the opportunity to showcase their work in front of the Chinese fashion industry professionals a week before, during the IFA Paris Graduation Show in Shanghai.
Students are not impermeable to the major trends and we noticed this season’s influences that were also spotted during the last fashion weeks. The 90s and its gale of deconstruction in Safa Yahiaalmakki, who mixes jeanswear and tailoring or again with Tanyalak Promlumpak, who got her inspiration from the greatest contemporary architects to unbalance her plaid-shirts and pieces of workwear into elegant white and navy silhouettes – two collections with realistic creativity, which would totally fit onto the clothing racks of a London or Tokyo concept store.
Safa Yahiaakmakki
But as on each and every runway in the big fashion capitals, it is mainly sportswear, which was dominating. In Nicole Siow Thong See’s collection and her military inspired parkas, in Aweriawhen Umuomo’s collection which mixes impeccable mens suits in tweed or light ballerinas skirts in tulle with pieces of pierced down jackets. With Amira Azizi, who found her inspiration in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s art to poeticize her oversized ski coats with colourful embroideries and silk organza tutus. And again with Theo Decaux, who from the fairy tale “Peau d’Ane” delivers surprising princess dresses/tracksuits in “color of the moon” or “color of the sky” hand painted jerseys.
Other students revisit their childhood memories or their culture of origin like Chew Ting Lau, who creates her juvenile silhouettes from Hong Kong school uniforms or Cheng Hong Eng, who from pictures of his parents’ youth, came up with a collection for men made out of colorful shorts, gingham tops or trimmed gardeners’ overalls with a thought-through styling in every detail. Sagarika Joshi imagined an elegant ready-to-wear collection for women about individuality reflecting how Indian women don’t have an opinion and their struggle to achieve their true identity, exclusively ivory and red, from the traditional sari from her native Nepal. Dziezdorm Adjei takes a popular proverb in many African countries as a starting point to create garments for men “front and back”, which mix white poplin, corduroy to bogolanfini and a handmade Malian cotton fabric, which is also made today in Nigeria or in Ghana.
Mary Bashay illustrates the Harlem renaissance in the 20s and 30s with very colorful tweed clothes, jeans knitwear and a material she created herself from leather strips, while Yuliya Dovzhych let her romanticism run its’ natural course with colorful superposition covered with silk with ruffles and floral embroideries.
The audience invited to this show was able to discover very different works from all these talented students who, beyond the approaches which might seem very far from each other, delivered very accomplished collections. That shows that after three years at IFA Paris spent learning, thinking and experimenting, they are already more than able to deal with the contemporary fashion requirements.
For more information on the program that leads to this graduation fashion show, please see: Bachelor in Fashion Design & Technology