IFM’s 2025 MA Fashion Show Drew Beauty From Harsh Realities
PARIS — As is now customary, the MA students of the fashion design and knitwear design courses at the Institut Français de la Mode kicked off the fall 2025 Paris Fashion Week with a sampling from their upcoming graduation collections.
But while these young creatives may soon be tasked with creating tomorrow’s desirable product, they aren’t inured by today’s challenges — in the industry or otherwise.
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“What I’m most proud of is that they are so aware of the disaster in which we live, and they decided to react by beauty,” said Leyla Neri, director of the master of arts program. “What else do they have, you know? So most of the topics are kind of dark but you don’t even see it.”
The year’s students from 13 nationalities presented a six-look abstract giving somber inspirations a read filled with beauty and technical skill.
Take Catalan designer Ricard Baldomà whose six-look lineup was titled “A Pastar Fang,” which is “a polite way to tell someone to f–k off,” he later explained.
Frustrated by the lack of recognition of his native region of Catalonia at the European level, he couched pointed criticism featuring flags and slogans like “Nobody for President” in exuberant ruffles in the colors of France’s flag or glamorous draping featuring a European star melting to the ground.
Overconsumption is what Filip Bejek considered through a witty lineup that made recuperation look regal — for the kleptomaniac with a knack for styling. Another take on this was offered by Reece Liang, who hails from China’s Sichuan region, in a collection that turned tinsel and tags into fake-it-til-you-make-it personas of epic proportions.
Australia’s Jason Clark offered a portrait of an “immoral, gray, corporate hellscape” with a broken system but did so with structurally sound distorted silhouettes based on smart business outfits.
China’s Xingyi Jin sought to counter the draw of smart devices with a collection inspired by Chinese umbrellas and traditional coffered ceilings — elaborate crafts that are worth looking up for.
For Hawi Akrawi, the starting point was the derogatory term “Muttersöhnchen,” or “mummy’s boy” in German. Seeking to reclaim the word from its toxic implications had him unpacking its semantics but also his relationship to his mother, her migration from Kurdistan to Germany and his own experience in a new country after moving to Paris.
As ever, the collections were as diverse as they come and the talent, tangible.
Former chief executive officer of LVMH Fashion Group and Dior Sidney Toledano, who serves as president of this year’s ANDAM jury, lauded the progression of the program he saw through the year’s graduate collections.
“The freshness of the ideas, the freedom but also perfect execution — because you have no freedom without the technique — means that they are listening to [Neri],” he told WWD.
In his opinion, if tomorrow’s talents were shining bright on the first day of Paris Fashion Week, it was down to the IFM’s education teams under the direction of dean Xavier Romatet, offering the trifecta of “execution, creativity and organization.”
This played well with the students’ appetite for learning, which was boosted by collaborations with French and Italian manufacturers, who contributed to the development of outfits.
Among the companies sponsoring the students was Teintures de France, which worked with some 13 students. “It was all about marrying up their knack for crazy ideas with our know-how and technical expertise,” said manager of design Serge Haouzi.
One new development made available to students was 3D printing on textiles, which designer Paul Billot employed to create a nearly holographic depiction of a tropical bird on a shirt that telegraphed the “hyperrealist” tone inspired by Silicon Valley tech bros.
That wasn’t the only new technology Billot tapped. “I worked with a lot more machines than ever before,” he said, pointing out LED masks and helmets made using conventional 3D printing but also the way he tapped into AI, through a three-way hookup with LVMH Digital and the Ecole Polytechnique engineering school.
“If you explain too much, you end up with something generic; but if you accept that [AI] doesn’t understand something like gravity, it brings an interesting creative boost by working through its imperfections,” he said.
Also on the runway was the work of Steven Chevallier, Sojung Lee, Darius Betschart, Clémentine Lagadec Thévoux-Chabuel, Rachel Luurssen, Andu Yeonju Jang, Wenji Wu, Kristy Jingyan Chen, Sofia Castellon, Martin Lüttecke, Emilia Seitzn Sarah Corcos, Aurore Montagner, Yuedi Viola Zhang, Xingyu Chen, Ása Bríet, Sara Jamshidilarijani, Yi Melody Ding and Michael Zhang.
The class of 2025 will have another month to complete their collections and a research thesis before presenting them to a jury of industry professionals. After that, they will head into six-month internships.
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