CREATIVE WORKSHOP: DENIM CUSTOMIZATION.
For ISKOOL FINALISTS, July 14th, Villa Corner
The first international workshop branded Mestieri-LAB took place during the jury and awarding session of Iskool, a world wide contest that aims to link young designers and marketing managers to the denim industry with an educational content.
Thanks to ISKO, I have the honor to manage this major educational program, which includes schools from allover the world: UAL (Chelsea, UK), ESMOD (Munich, Germany), IUAV (Venice, Italy), AP College (Antwerp, Belgium), POLIMODA (Florence, Italy), AMD (Düsseldorf, Germany), FIDM (Los Angeles, USA), NABA (Milan, Italy), AALTO (Helsinki, Finland), Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology (Beijing, China), Academy of Arts & Design of Tsinghua University (Beijing, China), BUNKA Fashion college (Tokio, Japan) and UTS (Australia). La Sapienza (Rome,Italy), MFI (Milan, Italy), AMFI (Amsterdam, Holland).
Beside talent scouting and managing a good team of denim experts to teach fresh students something about this amazing material, I was pretty much keen on team building and networking this year. During the denim seminar we held in spring, I was talking to my beloved tutors: we observed that the 30 finalists are students coming from allover the world and we should help them to take advantage from this contest and create relationships.
But HOW do we make them working together whilst they are waiting to know who the winner will be?
Briefing. All design students were meeting in the park. I divided them into five groups carefully created mixing up different schools and nationalities. Each group received a box with a symbol (Sun, Heart, Flower, Star, Moon).
“You have 2 hour time to have an idea how to make this jacket unique and realize it!. Lunchtime marketing managers (students from marketing schools) will join your team, with the purpose to create a story telling to your product”.
I did really enjoy to prepare the workshop: 5 plastic boxes fulfilled with creative material (paints, colors, threads, scissors…) and a denim trucker jacket, the same jacket for all groups.
Teams at work. The best way for me to get in contact with people we do not know is to create something together.
SUN. Elettra Bertoli, Lisa Marie Marlot, Quinton Lovelace, Sayaka Niida. Silvia Messina, Travis Rice.
FLOWER. Miranda Hochkoeppler, Elena Trukhina, Yamada Yuka, David Caracuel. Ji Quing He, Alexia Battistella, Annabel van Eijk, Claudia Carroccia.
MOON. Farah Waly, Alessia Gozzano, Nadja Kiess, Hao Lingqi. Charlotte Lagruela, Boer Wu.
STAR. Ester Rigato, Alina Peuker, Joona Rautiainen, Wang Xintao. Roberta Bianchi, Francesca Varnelli.
HEART. Anna Biotti, Annie Ansell, Danielle Thaxton, Yoshino Saeko. Eleonora Kalabokas, Francesco Diomedi.
Sharing: we ended up sitting close to the sound check with a fresh beer sharing the results of the workshop. I personally felt touched to see how deep those guys went into it. Sharing message of energy, freedom, inner being, identity, love and peace.
I do love to see all this unique and beautiful guys sitting together, hand on product!
I do strongly believe that CREATIVITY is the most precious resource we do have as human beings. We all have it, not only people that are working in creative areas. I keep on saying to designers to focus on their ideas inspiring and contaminating all other roles around them in a creative way. A paper pattern maker is as well creative as an artist. Marketing manager have to be creative, it is not possible to develop projects only thinking about numbers. A farmer should be creative. Creativity is the resource we need to overcome everyday difficulties.
