What was the inspiration behind this collection?
My collection is called ‘Une’, which in French means “one.” The collection takes inspiration from the film The Piano Teacher by Michael Haneke from 2001. It’s a film about a woman who seems really simple and classy and modest at first glance, but throughout the film we discover that she has certain perversions. The beginning of the collection was trying to talk about this feeling of giving us something quite simple, and then throughout the way we watch the collection, we see a second meaning.

Is there any detail people might miss?
Probably the bag, specifically the handle. From the front it looks like a normal handle, but when you reverse it, you can see the whole bag is suspended just by garter holders.

Is there a piece that best represents the collection?
The piece that best represents the collection for me are the barely-there shoes I created. They feature a five-centimetre heel made in python, with basically no construction. The main thing about a shoe is that it covers your feet, so depending on who wears it, the shoe looks different. That’s the most personal part about it.

It represents the collection the most: the idea of this woman who was very modest, but actually into BDSM. The sheerness is the modest part of her, and the python is actually quite strong. I pair it with this huge coat that gives the idea that she’s fully dressed, but because of the shoe, it feels like she’s fully naked underneath.

What was the inspiration behind this collection?
My collection is called ‘No Longer Human’. When I started this collection, I was inspired by how so many faces and bodies are generated, edited, and exist before the real physical presence does. So, I got inspired by dolls, mannequins, and artificial figures of today, and mixed these together with these Renaissance ladies that were plucking out their hairlines and eyebrows to look as less human as possible.

I wanted to see the body more as an object that is being built, where different parts are coming together. That’s why I have a lot of crackling and weird shapes; it suggests some of the flaws of becoming human.

Can you tell us more about the techniques you used in this collection?
To create the crackling pieces, I made many layers of paint, cracked them, then added a varnish on top.

What did you appreciate most about Polimoda?
What I really like about Polimoda and why I think it’s good for young designers is because quality is very much valued here. It’s really about having the best outcome possible without cutting on creativity: combining both to have creative pieces that are also made very well.

What was the inspiration behind this collection?
My collection is called ‘Packages’ and it started by looking at the unglamorous side of fashion: the backstage. There, I find beauty in the models still wrapped in bathrobes, still with pins in their hair – all the little details that talk about beauty in the making.

From there, I looked at one of my favourite artists of all time, Cy Twombly. Cy Twombly was living in Rome for a long time, and you can just imagine this American man surrounded by a city full of beautiful marble sculptures. Yet he decides to take a bunch of wooden blocks and panels and put them together and say, ‘This is my sculpture.’ I quite like that there’s an unglamorous side to his work. From there I connected everything to my favourite part of fashion, which is the pattern making and the really technical side of making garments.

What are some of your favourite details from the collection?
I put a lot of effort into the inside of the garment, because for me that’s the most personal part: the part you touch, the part you wear, the part where you access the pockets.

Can you tell us more about the techniques you used in this collection?
One technique that runs throughout the collection is bonding. I had an internship during the summer, and a professor mentor who had long conversations with me about bonding and the beauty of dual fabrics, how you can put one thing and another together and it can be extremely beautiful. I made a suede peacoat with an extended collar; suede wouldn’t normally carry this much structure, but I bonded it to silk. So on the inside it’s a fully bonded jacket without lining, but because of the silk you have ease and access.

This same story appears in other garments, like a shirt with a printed flower, onto which I added three-dimensional suede and silk flowers to give a 3D effect. The print is there, and then the flower emerges from it, making it come alive.

What was the inspiration behind this collection?
The starting point for my collection was my hometown of Réunion, France. I was thinking about a traveller character who would go there and I was interested in his point of view and what objects and traditions he would be drawn to. So I explored the wardrobe of a contemporary traveller and also wanted to have these inspirations from nature and all the different textures.

The piece that I think represents my collection the most is this bomber jacket that has two layers. It represents the mix I wanted to show – something more embroidered, embellished, and enriched, paired with a very strong inner layer in nylon that’s a little more sportswear. It represents the balance I was trying to find throughout the collection.

What are some of your favourite details from the collection?
For a detail I’m really proud of: I made a knitwear sweater in jacquard, and the inside – which doesn’t really show when worn – has all these fringes that are basically just the inside of the pattern. I think it’s super beautiful that it’s hidden. I like having something that stays just between me and the garment.

Another detail I’m also really happy with is that I developed necklaces for each one of the models. There are six different types of necklaces, and each guy has a different accessory. You don’t always see them when the models walk, but I love having that kind of detail.

The idea behind it was to create pendants that go with the traveller concept, imagining that he could find something along the way, like pearls or beads, and just add them to his necklace, making them into a kind of good luck sign. It was really fun to make.

What was the inspiration behind this collection?
My collection is a menswear collection about a group of teenagers who live in the middle of nowhere in the countryside. They’re stuck in a loop of boredom; there’s nothing to do, and they want to escape. So they start to play a role-playing game where they pretend to be the outlaws and bad boys they see on television. The game they play tries to melt the reality where they live with the reality they create in the game.

With my garments, I wanted to mix something more traditional with something more abstract, and I also wanted to play with the thickness of fabric and draping. The thickness and material speaks to the harsh side of these bad guys, while the drape brings in something lighter, something less sure of itself.

What are some of your favourite details from the collection?
I have these little leather accessories you can play with: you can wear them as a necklace, on the belt loop of the pants, or on the jacket. The idea was that you can play with the collection and all the looks however you want, particularly with accessories.

The bags come in three colours, black, white, and green, and you can mix them however you want. It goes with this idea of men escaping reality, having this little playful thing that you see but don’t really see.

What was the inspiration behind this collection?
My collection is called ‘Another Role’, and the starting point was the David Lynch film Lost Highway. The collection is about an actress who has lost her true self in between the roles she’s performing; she’s stuck between reality and performance. The audience expects a certain image from her, a polished diva, but she doesn’t necessarily feel that way. At some point, with all these constant attempts to fit those roles, she feels herself as a mechanic trying to fix herself in order to fit into society. So I have this contrast between chic diva elements and mechanical uniform, utilitarian elements in my collection.

Do you have a favourite piece from the collection?
The piece I want to talk about is this coat, which is a tailored coat in a yellow, very thick gabardine. It was very difficult to handle and stitch, but now it looks great. It really represents my collection because from one side it’s a tailored, very chic diva piece. But if you look at the lower part of the garment, there’s this print of a crushed car, with Preciosa crystals applied on top.

We’re doing a collaboration with Preciosa, they gave us all the crystals according to our projects. So it’s crystals on top of a crushed car surface. The crystals are chic, and the crushed car is this feeling of, yes, she’s a diva, but she’s not just a diva.

What was the inspiration behind this collection?
My collection starts from the feeling of being in a world that always wants something more, always expecting new ideas, always running. I represent the feeling of being frozen in time, being stuck with things. Through the metaphor of chess and frozen pieces, I represent this idea of feeling emotionally stuck and frozen.

Is there any look that best represents your collection?
The look that represents this idea most is almost every one of them, because I tried to represent this idea of falling, garments that are falling but frozen.

Like this dress: it’s a normal dress, but there’s a shirt that appears to be falling, giving the idea of being frozen but stuck.

What was the inspiration behind this collection?
My collection is about a group of guys who move from the countryside into Bangkok, inspired by my parents who immigrated into the city. The clothes bring out memories and references they would have grown up with, like vintage posters, which there are a lot of in the collection. The garments draw on the iconography of historical Thai clothes, but also contemporary styles, with this whole out-of-period, out-of-time thing: they move into the city thinking what they brought is still chic, but they stand out.

Is there any look that best represents your collection?
This jacket has two really large embroideries I worked with through a sponsorship from Ricamo Garziano Ricami, a company based in Italy that does embroidery for a lot of houses. I got that connection through Lucy Meyer, one of our mentors.

The piece is made with a cotton-linen, a really light material that defines the whole summery vibe of Thailand. It’s a constructed jacket but still really soft, so it keeps this draped silhouette. The back pops out a bit. I have this kicking movement in the collection across all the pants, and this is the jacket that has that movement in it. It’s my favourite piece.

The coat represents these men who left the countryside and came to the big city. They would arrive with one suit, this suit that they’d wear to apply for jobs or work anywhere. It’s light and easy.

What was the inspiration behind this collection?
My collection is called ‘Simulation’. It’s about how we live between the digital and physical world a lot nowadays, how fast-paced our rhythm of life is, and how we sometimes want to step out of that. A big inspiration for this was the gas station; you can just get in the car and leave in an instant, change location fast, and be completely autonomous in where you want to be.

This dress is inspired by the car wash at a gas station, that rotary device that turns so quickly and has all these plastic fringes. I wanted to create that feeling in a dress. I really love the movement: when the model walks, you get this idea of plastic fringes moving. It turned out really beautiful, and I think it represents this idea of looking at the gas station and interpreting it in a completely new way.

I also worked on these screen shapes on the jackets, wanting to create the feeling of a simulation or a projection. From far away, you might think the pockets are real, but when you get closer, it’s actually embossed leather. From far we might think it’s a regular garment, and when you get closer, you realise you’re not looking at something real, the same as when we look at our screens every day.

The idea was to create a new kind of bomber with that screen shape in the front, adding details you’d normally find on a bomber but not actually having them be there. Even the usual stitched patch detail, I really worked hard to get that embossing with the leather stitching on top so it looks very real from far away. On the runway, you won’t notice it until the last second. But yes, there are functional pockets.

Looking back at your time as a student, is there a memory or lesson that has stayed with you?
Like every student, I had doubts. We all did. I didn’t come from a fashion family, and at times I questioned whether I belonged in that world. In Italy, connections often seem like the most important thing. What my teachers helped me understand was that the question isn’t whether you have doubts.

The question is how you channel your creativity and where you choose to take it. There is space for everybody in fashion. There are many different careers beyond becoming a designer: product development, merchandising, communication and countless other roles within the industry.

What did you hope to pass on to the students as mentors?
Luke Meier: We tried to be truthful. School is very different from the professional world. On one hand, this is one of the few moments in a designer’s life when they can be completely free creatively. It’s a time to push ideas as far as possible, to develop an aesthetic and a point of view.

At the same time, we wanted to give them a sense of what comes next-whether they start their own brand or join an established house-and help them understand the demands of the industry, from making strong garments to developing their skills.

Lucie Meier: We weren’t harsh. Our role was really to guide them and help them find the right direction. Sometimes they were receptive, sometimes less so, but I think they appreciated having an outside perspective.