CLASS OF 2025: Institut Français de la Mode

DATE: 3rd March 2025. PLACE: Paris Fashion Week. TIME: 16.00

IFM’s Class of 2025 graduation show presented 26 students, 16 fashion designers and 10 knitwear students, with each student presenting six unique designs that reflected their diverse cultural backgrounds, drawing inspiration, common themes explored in their collections included sustainability in fashion, social politics, and the preservation of cultural heritage.

While our world remains immersed in post-pandemic and political bleakness, these students beam with diverse, unfaltering talent. With experimentation being the connecting thread between all the collections, this year’s graduates presented craft-heavy pieces, with strong intellectual backdrops. Inspired by a vast array of references, it seems that the students were pushed to take risks and embrace their failures as the most crucial part of their process. It was refreshing to see garments that were not created to meet certain expectations, as this generation does not try to answer the question:

Melody Yiii

Hawi Akrawi

Wen Wenij

Steven Chevallier

Steven Chevallier

knitwear collection narrating the story of the 80’s HIV crisis which planted a stigma amongst the LGBTQ community for the cause of the disease.

Asa Bríet Brattaberg

Asa Bríet Brattaberg

Asa Bríet Brattaberg

Sofia Castellon

Sofia Castellon

Sofia Castellon

Michael Zhang

Michael Zhang

Questions notions of authenticity and sexuality in “Chinese-ness” and diaspora. A study of textures, drape and delicate crafts create a world where signifiers and double meanings mutate and challenge both Western and Eastern perceptions of identity, crafting new expressions of the semi-mythical.

Working closely with artist Ding Shilun and my grandmother, I wanted to create community and a catharsis to the contemporary censorship of queerness in China; my collection is a redemption to both my past and the present, questioning who belongs and how we create belonging.