In Raffles Milano, the creativity and extraordinary skills of the students find their place. The students, under the expert guidance of Professor Renzo Catoni, pattern-making Professor at the Institute of Fashion and Design in Milan, are ready to take their first steps toward sustainability by designing clothes from fabric scraps.
Sustainability and eco-friendliness are very vast and, for this reason, we often tend to underestimate them. What is the real reason? Huge costs and time-consuming. Raffles Milano is committed, through its teaching activities, to make the students aware of environmental impacts by giving them notions to deal with them.
In my opinion, a skilled modeller is one of the most useful figures in the realities of fashion houses: they are capable of building – building is actually the right term – designers’ dreams. With this strategy, Renzo Catoni transmits his knowledge to Raffles students.
According to the Professor: “Teaching pattern-making means sharing a design method, both with the technique of the flat model and the moulage, to give life to every creative idea. Understanding the pattern-making techniques and tailoring processes allows you to design garments that secure a perfect fit, marked by lines and volumes that must be well suited to the physical structure.
My advice is always to start with bodies and physical movements analysis, to study all the elements that will characterize the head drawn and translate them into geometric constructions, through the paper model. However, only through the cut and the packaging of the test canvas you can see in 3D what has been drawn on paper, to rent the garment directly on the body and subsequently adjust it. Thanks to the modelling knowledge, creative artists can enhance their projects on the basis of a detailed analysis of the garment feasibility.”
Finally, thanks to the collaboration between stylist Elvis Furlan, photographer Benjamin Vitti and Raffles Milano that all this can emerge. The stylist’s artistic direction shed the light on a photo shoot inspired by the nineties: to be more precise, the aesthetics of glossy photographs published in the magazines of that decade, including the main characters of the garments made by aspiring designers.
An absolutely interesting method to introduce new artists to the media world of the Fashion system: through constant challenges, towards their know-how and thought, the right approach to creativity is stimulated. I wonder if we can taste other divergent designs.
Fashion Editor Edoardo Bertazzoni
Photography Benjamin Vitti
Art Direction Styling Elvis Furlan
Make-up Ele_Kelembet
Set Designer Rosita Romor
Casting Lea Frangipane
Model Maria @thelabmodels
School & student collections Raffles Milano
