IFM Bachelor Students Kick Off Paris Men’s Fashion Week
PARIS — For the first time, the BA students of the Institut Français de la Mode opened the men’s schedule of Paris Fashion Week with a runway show presenting their graduate collections.
The school’s MA students have been opening the women’s shows in March since 2021.
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The looks were spectacular, broaching topics that ranged from androids and pageantry to faraway escapes and what could sprout after a “best before” date. Techniques and materials were as varied as they come, ranging from textile and wicker to latex and even cigarette filters sewn together into a fluffy cocoon.
“What I found really great — and something we try to avoid with [faculty] — is that there isn’t an IFM ‘style,’” said the school’s general manager Xavier Romatet after the show. “And we don’t want one. We want to give them all the tools they need to truly express themselves and we saw the [resulting] diversity of creative territories.”
Although these students started the curriculum under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, program heads Thierry Rondenet and Hervé Yvrenogeau felt the class of 2023 had blossomed.
“Each one of them has the keys to their house. At most, we guide them to the door — or sometimes the lock,” said Yvrenogeau with evident fondness as students buzzed around happily, packing their designs and congratulating each other on a job well done.
Among the highlights were the intricate pleats of Janine Sirbovan, who hails from Romania, and the odd dandies of Robin Mayet’s “Rhythm & Nostalgia.” Germany’s Paula Dischinger asked whether “the human being is a herd animal” by superimposing shadowy shapes on her designs. For Jiawei Han, the harried workers spotted coming out of offices around the school were the inspiration for “White Collar System,” made from those cigarettes materializing the stress of it all and a buff latex body that turned out to be a “skin suit” with shirt and tie underneath.
Meanwhile, the collection of French designer Lucie Savarin and her casting that included wheelchair users left Romatet touched by the way she embraced all human bodies.
For the school executive, the bachelor level degree is the “most creative terrain” for young designers. “The more mature you get, the more constrained you are. [The BA students] have the freedom of youngsters who are experimenting,” he said.
“All we asked is that they inscribe their work in a reality, political, creative or even economic, because too often fashion is out of phase with what’s happening and is seen only as an escape,” Yvrenogeau said.
With 250 students hailing from some 30 nationalities in the three-year program created in 2019, some 70 graduates come out with the French school’s BA in fashion design.
But they aren’t expected back at the IFM for an MA quite yet — if ever.
“Most of them need a break and we encourage them to go apply what they learned in studios,” Romatet said. “Fashion is a formidable platform for this and we will have given them the keys to personal accomplishment, be it in fashion or in any other field.”
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