Held on September 22, “Back to Couture” was the first Istituto Marangoni show in Paris since the pandemic, celebrating the school’s top 10 graduating students from 2022 and a long-awaited comeback of physical fashion shows. The setting was the spectacular Opera Ballroom of Intercontinental Paris LeGrand Hotel, whose soft lighting emphasised the models’ red-lipped make-up and sleek hairdos to evoke Paris’s 19th-century grandeur and the city’s Haute Couture roots.

Created by a highly competitive and creative class of graduating designers, the collections offered a stunning display of hand-worked finishings, hand-made fabrics, innovative pattern-making, and delicate trims. Their work showcased the university’s top-notch education with designers who can easily balance creating beautiful, wearable garments and applying the Haute Couture savoir-faire foundational to the successful curriculum at the Istituto Marangoni Paris campus.

The Designers included Jeanne Millet, with “Cœur, corps et âme”. Inspired by the Japanese myth of “Yuki Onna” or “Snow Woman”, her collection celebrates the human body and its relation to nature through delicate, sheer bias-cut garments, delicate finishings, hand-made ceramic beading, hand knits, and origami paper garments.

 “The Attendants” by Ahmad Rizki features religious motifs, such as nuns’ habits, praying hands and radiating light, and beautiful hand-embroideries to create light and depth. Hand-sewn leather details and textural fabric manipulations complete a voluminous and dynamic collection inspired by the designer’s experience with loneliness. 

A reference to his native culture, Bohdan Tsyshkovskyi’s “Revolution 1917” evokes the October Socialist Revolution and its relevance today while also questioning the notion of the “Creator” and their identity. It features tailoring, classical and disruptive corsetry, “ready-made” fashion with a ceramic plate suspended on a dress, and a hand-made chandelier dress from second-hand, vintage crystal. 

With “My Roots, Antonia Porto hints at the artisanal handwork and architecture of her home country, Colombia. Her garments were created from her hand-woven textiles into silhouettes to enhance the female figure and promote versatility. She picked a minimal colour palette of ochre tones inspired by pre-Colombian artwork and contemporary architecture. 

Sara Sowins’s “Romanticism” collection expresses a “New Romanticism”, appreciating locality, handcraft, and a neutral carbon footprint to move to the future. Her collection features deadstock fabrics, classical tailoring, circular pattern cutting, recuperated metal and leather details, knitted textiles, and fabric manipulations of silk and latex.

Inspired by his German and Japanese ascendance and his interest in post-modern architecture, Bauhaus design, street art and workwear, Maximilian Engelmann displayed “Technical Combustion”. The collection plays with volumes and cuts in contrast colour and neon fabrics, with a clear reference to utility, versatile, and evolutive garments.

Bella Diaz designed “The Divine Femme” to embody women’s boundless and relentless energy. Her flattering silhouettes in vibrant colours, hand-bedazzled finishings, whimsical trims, and glittering accessories celebrate the beauty and strength of her ultimate muse–women. 

“Reflecting Journal” is about Seungyun Cho’s reflections on the unconscious and trauma, embracing femininity and shedding toxic masculinity. These concepts are expressed in her beading, subtraction pattern cutting, hand-embroidery techniques, hand-knits and dip dyeing to create a universe juxtaposing tranquillity with tension. 

Samuel Marques’s complex relationship with his father, contrasting with his adoration of his mother, inspired “Why Dad”. His collection embraces cashmere and silks to create a sophisticated genderless universe. He displays delicate bias trims and finishings borrowed from Haute Couture contrasting with subverted tailoring, “scrunched” fabric manipulations, and boxing motifs. 

Initially inspired by his girlfriend’s meticulous organisation habits, Yanghun Kim’s “Her Wardrobe” ultimately deals with Korean society’s stress on perfection and conservative values. The collection subverts office wear with versatile garments while embedding unacceptable elements such as wrinkled fabrics, loose threads, and “wrong fabrics”, dignifying the unavoidable mess of even the best-organised wardrobes.

“Through the show, we communicated our student’s forward-thinking designs and our school’s approach to fashion and couture. The mix of innovative designs and the traditional Parisian venue created the perfect balance of old and new, know-how and innovation, past and future.” Adi Maoz-Cohen, Director of Education.