By now you must have figured it out: we love young people!
Whether they are creative, intuitive or instinctive, they have the ability to power change.
It is up to us to educate them by showing how possible it is to change course.
It will be they, learning from our mistakes and the limitations of progress, which is now presenting the bill, who will improve obsolete roads and empower new ways of living that care about people, ethics and the environment.
Thus begins our journey with the students of the fourth art high school, Giuseppe Terragni, fashion design address of the Centro Studi Casnati in Como.
Excellent relationships with school and enthusiastic school leaders, forerunners of an excellent education model (see Casnati for ESD) have led to the emergence of formidable synergies.
Thus begins the collaboration between Centro Studi Casnati, Produce Sinapsi and La Methode.
Imagine if ... you'll write the future.
Designing a garment that:
A timeless product that by its aptitude can remain recognizable and divorced from ephemeral and temporary trends and styles and that places respect for the environment and the person at the center.
For the students, real and replicable work in an industrial setting with a horizon toward the future, a not-so-distant future after all.
The project demands reflect the starting points of the La Methode project and can be summarized in this brief outline:
The same design tools were provided to all children to carry out this project:
Thanks to these elements and the supervision of Professor Laura Castelletti, it was possible to lead the students to a finished product that reflected the design direction.
The boundaries of the project: Are you ready to design the leader of the future?
Is it possible to make a product that can remain iconic for the next 100 years, without the aid of chemistry, colors, but only by challenging creativity?
Conceiving, designing and finally making a garment:
The demands do not end there.
The demands do not endAll of La Methode's current leaders are meant to beo here. genderless and so we also asked the designers; for details and accessories, they were provided with the fabrics in Up-Time, the jersey made from pre-consumer raw materials leaving free room for use.
After these premises we come to the day of the first meeting, March 1, 2023, at our Laboratory.
The young designers immersed themselves among spools, textile machines, and thanks to Bruno's support, were able to see and touch the transformations that take place in the textile supply chain.
Behind every single garment there are many production steps; companies and people are involved as early as the design selection stage, and this factor is extremely crucial.
Inclusive thinking that, even before triggering any processing, consistently directs its development is therefore imperative.
In accompanying the students on this difficult but opportunity-filled journey, Professor Castelletti's supervision and guidance was instrumental.
During the second meeting with the children at the institute, we got to view the first sketches, from that moment we realized the true potential of the project.
The guys' ideas were very good, and with Bruno's tips on how to improve the fit, make the packing steps easier, and how to go about obviating future problems that the unfinished, heavy-weight fabric might have caused, the projects got off the ground.
First review, April 2023.
The project took place during the last academic term, and towards the end of April, Bruno and Federica met with the children for a check-point on the work.
Students showed the first design sketches hinting at the true potential of the project.
Thanks to Bruno's tips on how to improve the fit, ease the tailoring steps, and how to go about obviating future issues that the unfinished (heavy-weighted) fabric might have caused, the project officially got underway.
The following phases took place within the educational program with teachers supervising and developing the following phases until the final surprise.
Project delivery, June 2023.
The day of delivery was a great satisfaction.
Each designer recounted his or her personal experience in the realization of the project.
The stories, starting from the concept, have been articulating toward the first sketches and paper patterns have come to the presentation of prototypes, which in our opinion are interesting and developable for the future.
This collaboration showed itself in all its creative expressiveness, and the children lived up to it.
Of course, keeping to the guidelines by arriving at an interesting end result proved to be a daunting challenge.
The fabric we provided to the kids, a hemp and cotton prototype finished with a simple machine wash, proved to be extremely challenging.
The gravity elongation of the knit has led to a constant revision of the patterns; to this we add the difficulty in making a fabric that rolls up, precisely because it is not stabilized, and the details used for trims, hems, pockets and who the folds of the garments, always using with the iconic up-cycle bias, the symbol of Methode.
We leave the floor to Professor Castelletti for a comment on the project.
First and foremost, this collaboration has allowed us to get a taste of fashion and textiles in a different way; our pupils often have the opportunity to interact with companies through projects dedicated to them, and they have already been able to touch upon the field of sustainability.
In this case, however, La Methode allowed us to imagine this diverse field with different eyes; it is crucial at this age to be able to see and experience a system in the round, realizing that it is not always imperative to put aesthetics first.
The company followed us step by step, planning with us an intermediate step of presentation: it was important for us to understand whether the designed garments could match the expectations of the final customer, and fortunately they did.
The next phase was definitely the most complex; the goal of my discipline (pattern making and tailoring), within our art high school, is to allow the students to make the garment they designed from scratch, to better understand its flaws and strengths. In this case we raised the bar, we asked them to make the garment with finishes, accessories and all the details necessary for the presentation of a finished garment.
It has not been an easy journey, especially the steps involved in processing the material, which is very different from the fabrics the children usually handle.
For that very reason, however, it was an exciting challenge that gave them new skills and earned them the opportunity to walk the runway during the Fashion Show held at our school in early June.
Really a great satisfaction for all of the
Link all'articolo pubblicato sul sito del Centro Studi Casnati, abbiamo portato l'educazione civica nel futuro:
https://www.centrocasnati.it/index.php/sections/abbiamo-portato-leducazione-civica-nel-futuro/
Thanks to all the children who participated and put their creativity on the line, we present them to you with a brief description of their respective projects:
