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Istituto Marangoni and AlpTextyles

Istituto Marangoni confirms its partnership with Alptextyles: weaving tradition and innovation for a sustainable alpine textile future

Launched in 2022, AlpTextyles intertwines the living heritage of Alpine textile ecosystems with contemporary innovation, promoting a new generation of sustainable value chains. The initiative demonstrates how centuries-old know-how from sheep farming to natural dyeing and artisanal weaving can be reinterpreted to address today’s challenges of climate change, resource optimization, and consumer demand for authenticity.

Istituto Marangoni confirms its partnership with AlpTextyles, the Interreg Alpine Space project that brings together twelve organizations from six Alpine countries to shape the future of textiles through sustainability, circularity, and cultural heritage. 

At the heart of the project is a conviction: heritage is not a memory, but a resource. From the creation of the Wool Library that catalogues autochthonous Alpine sheep breeds, to immersive experiences in the AlpTextyles Metaverse, the project transforms traditions into forward-looking solutions for a circular textile economy.

Through its participation, Istituto Marangoni contributes expertise in design and education, helping to connect younger generations with the values of Alpine craftsmanship and sustainability. This has been expressed most recently at Milano Unica 2025, where students presented capsule collections developed within the project. Their work integrated historic techniques such as Cantù lacework with digitally inspired silhouettes, using handwoven textiles from Valposchiavo to create garments that bridged past and future

 

Guided tours led by AlpTextyles partners welcomed more than 60 Istituto Marangoni students and mentors to the exhibition stand, offering an immersive journey across raw fibers, artisanal fabrics, and digital storytelling. This encounter highlighted the project’s educational mission: to empower the next generation of designers to imagine sustainable and culturally rooted textile futures. 

AlpTextyles continues to deliver tangible outputs for businesses, institutions, and communities, including:

  • Orientation guides for SMEs to adopt sustainable design and communication strategies;
  • Toolkits to help museums and cultural institutions safeguard and transmit textile heritage;
  • A policy brief addressed to European and regional authorities to reinforce sustainable, place-based textile ecosystems

Istituto Marangoni remains committed to supporting this unique alliance. Together with its partners, the institution will continue to explore how Alpine heritage can inspire new languages in design, strengthen regional economies, and promote a more circular textile industry.

A Visual Journey

The Aesthetics of the Alps

This research project investigates the aesthetic values of the Alpine world, constructing a visual and conceptual map that links nature, material culture, and contemporary creativity. Through a sequence of images and textile narratives, the study explores three symbolic landscapes—the forest, the light, and the flowering meadows—each expressing a specific relationship between humans and their environment. Traditional materials and techniques such as loden, lace, and embroidery are reinterpreted as cultural mediators that embody the Alpine aesthetic and its evolution over time.


The project embraces the notion of the sublime as a key to understanding the mountain’s complex beauty—an aesthetic of contrasts, irregularities, and emotional intensity that transcends harmony and perfection. It examines how this “difficult” beauty continues to inspire artists, designers, and architects, generating new forms of expression that bridge tradition and innovation.
The Alps are thus reconsidered not only as a geographical space but as an aesthetic and spiritual dimension, where the tension between the earthly and the elevated defines a unique creative identity. In the post-pandemic context, this research also reflects on a renewed need for connection with nature, seen as both a refuge and a source of transformation.
The complete visual journey, along with interviews with professionals from various disciplines, offers new perspectives on the enduring aesthetic significance of the Alpine landscape.

Past Textures, Present Gestures, Future Forms

Tradition Reimagined

As a project partner in the AlpTextyles initiative, Istituto Marangoni has played a key role in shaping and developing several of the project’s most forward-thinking outputs. What follows is a curated selection of digital experiences and educational tools that explore Alpine textile heritage through innovative lenses. From interactive archives and immersive virtual spaces to accessible online learning, these outputs reflect a shared commitment to preserving cultural memory while reimagining tradition for the future of fashion and design

 

Digital archives

This triptych of digital archives — from Polo Poschiavo (CH), ZRC SAZU (SI), and Montafon (AT) — provides a rich visual and material record of Alpine textile culture. Each archive offers a distinct lens on local practices, patterns, and histories, made accessible through digitization. Together, they form the foundation of the AlpTextyles project, serving as both a source of inspiration for new designs and a shared platform for preserving cultural memory.

Check the collections:

 
Metaverse

In this immersive space, garments from the past and present meet beyond the physical. Traditional pieces from the archives of Polo Poschiavo, ZRC SAZU, and Montafon are exhibited alongside new designs from the capsule collection — all reimagined as digital twins. This metaverse environment allows users to explore Alpine material culture in motion, extending the life and reach of heritage through virtual storytelling and speculative fashion. 
Here is the link for the virtual experience. 

 

MOOC

Developed within the framework of the AlpTextyles project, this free online course offers an immersive introduction to the rich cultural, material, and social dimensions of Alpine textile traditions. Designed for a wide audience of learners, the course blends academic perspectives with practical insights, drawing on the knowledge of designers, researchers, and local artisans deeply rooted in the Alpine context. Through a dynamic and multidisciplinary approach, participants are invited to explore how heritage practices can inform contemporary design and innovation. This MOOC serves as a truly accessible gateway into a unique learning experience—one that bridges regions, generations, and creative disciplines, while fostering dialogue between tradition and the future

You can discover the course here

 

For further details about the initiative, visit the Alptextyles page

Project partners:
Polo Poschiavo (Svizzera), ZRC SAZU – Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Slovenia), emlyon business school (Francia), Razvojna agencija Sora / Development Agency Sora (Slovenia), Regione Lombardia (Italia), Confindustria Moda (Italia), BELLISSIMO (Italia), Istituto Marangoni (Italia), TECHTERA (Francia), Stand Montafon (Austria), Mediplant (Svizzera), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germania)

SUPPORTED BY THE EUROPEAN UNION THROUGH THE INTERREG ALPINE SPACE PROGRAMME: € 2,979,694

 
Istituto Marangoni’s participation in AlpTextyles reaffirms its mission: to educate designers capable of shaping not only fashion, but also a more sustainable and culturally connected future.