DATE: 24th June 2025. PLACE: IFM Campus. TIME: 18.00
W:Maximiliano Dubois
The Institut Français de la Mode (IFM) Bachelor of Arts 2025 Graduate Show marked a significant shift toward "narrative-driven" fashion. Opening Paris Fashion Week Menswear in June 2025, the show featured 30 selected students who transformed the IFM campus into a space for personal manifestos. Rather than focusing on commercial viability, the cohort leaned into the concept of "Clothes as Biography," using fashion to navigate complex histories of migration, childhood memory, and societal subversion.
Zelig Davoult presented a collection that questioned the tension between the "unselfconscious child" and the "socially adapted adult." His work was a study of gestural emotion, balancing intentional construction with a sense of play. The silhouettes were characterized by a sophisticated yet rebellious energy, seeking to capture the moment a child first begins to perform for the outside world. Similarly exploring themes of identity and cultural friction, Zilan Ma utilized the runway to delve into the aesthetics of censorship and the "unseen." Her collection drew inspiration from the way creativity adapts to restrictions, featuring layered details and hidden elements that suggested what is concealed is often more powerful than what is revealed.
Raphaël Ignazi moved the needle toward a cinematic sense of "cunning utility" with his collection, "Les Voleuses" (The Thieves). Inspired by the poise of Catherine Deneuve and the archetype of the elegant art thief, Ignazi’s work focused on garments that facilitate movement and secrecy. His designs prioritized a sharp, refined aesthetic that hid a darker, more mischievous intent—fashion designed for those who "steal not out of need, but for the thrill." In a similar vein of character-driven design, Vincente Aycaguer Munoz delivered a collection that interrogated the primary function of textiles: to protect and frame the body. His work was noted for its grounded, yet quietly poetic approach to archetypal menswear fabrics like denim and canvas, which he manipulated to create silhouettes that felt both durable and ethereal.
The show also featured the striking work of Assoke Felix Loadjro, whose collection "BABI" served as a vibrant tribute to his roots in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Loadjro’s designs explored the "plurality" of the city, focusing on the tension between authenticity and artifice. By experimenting with a wide range of materials—from oxidized metal leaves and rusted textures to untreated leathers and fur headpieces—he translated the kinetic energy of Abidjan into a fashion language that felt both ancient and futuristic. Collectively, these designers represented a new era for IFM, one where technical mastery is used as a tool to unearth deeply personal and political truths.
Eastern Promises draws from the post-Soviet visual and emotional landscape of the 1990s and 2000s, reimagined with irony and affection. Symbols of everyday life – wall carpets, mosaics, knockoff sportswear – are juxtaposed with the ornate detail of Ukrainian folk craftsmanship. The collection is both a reflection and a reinterpretation: a commentary on cultural identity, memory, and transformation.
My collection draws from Casa Susanna, a photobook and documentary about a house where men – who led typically heteronormative lives – would gather to dress and live as women. What struck me was how the rigid concepts of gender dissolved in that space. I wanted to explore the in-between: imagining the first moment someone tries on women’s clothing, embracing the so-called “mistakes” that come with discovery and self-expression.
This collection is a tribute to Abidjan, the vibrant capital of Côte d’Ivoire. It celebrates the street as a runway, sport as a universal language, and the Ivorian people as a generative creative force. Each look embodies a character – a fragmented identity shaped by a city where fashion, sport, and digital imagery blur into one.
The tension between authenticity and artifice, the human and the mask, runs throughout. BABI is my way of translating Abidjan’s plurality – its many faces, its kinetic energy – which has always pulsed through my creative practice.
This collection lives in the liminal static between Superliminal’s warped dimensions and Minecraft’s looping logic – a sartorial rebellion against the scripts we are coded to repeat. Here, six looks delve into the quiet chaos between truth and fiction. It invites the viewer into a space where the familiar becomes uncanny, and the uncanny becomes a mirror.
Like Magritte’s pipe that is not a pipe, these clothes whisper contradictions: this is real, this is not.
Les Voleuses imagines a group of elegant, thrill-seeking women – bored with their privileged lives – who turn to art theft not for need, but for pleasure. It’s a fantasy of subversion wrapped in wealth, led by an eternal muse: Catherine Deneuve. Her image, equal parts aloof and iconic, helped shape the collection’s refined but mischievous tone.
I wanted to reinterpret the wardrobe of the ultra-wealthy woman with a twist: one eye on elegance, the other on cunning utility.
