5 Minutes with the Isko Denim Design Award Winner: Andrea Grossi
The upcoming denim designers still studying the craft, are the ones who will lead the denim industry into the future.
To highlight some of those young creatives, Turkish denim mill ISKO presented a Denim Design Award as part of its ISKO I-SKOOL™ educational platform. The winner of this year’s Sustainable Design Award presented by Lenzing, was Andrea Grossi from Polimoda, a fashion design school in Florence, Italy.
Carved in Blue caught up with Andrea to talk more about the win and his plans for his part in the future of denim.
Locman Presentation during the 94th Pitti Immagine Uomo, June 2018 in Florence, Italy.
Carved in Blue: Why did you decide to participate in the Isko Denim Design competition?
Andrea: I decided to participate to Isko Denim Design Award because I love the contest award for young students, I think it’s a great opportunity for us to express ourselves and our vision. I’m very interested in working with denim, for all the possibilities it offers, and in order to break the stereotypes of clothing.
Carved in Blue: What did you learn in this process?
Andrea: Thanks to this process, I learned how to work with denim, what are the possibilities and the long processes that lead us to the creation of this fabric with TENCEL™ lyocell. I believe that only by knowing certain processes of creation can something truly new and innovative be created.
Carved in Blue: What does sustainability mean to you?
Andrea: According to my vision, sustainability means research, innovation and change. And only with change and evolving the old methods of creating and thinking that we can get to a more sustainable world, looking at the future of our planet. I think it is also the task of us young designers to inform ourselves and know these realities to have an improvement in the coming years.
Carved in Blue: What are your future career plans?
Andrea: What I know about my future career is that I want to create. I’m still not sure what or how, but I know that my way is to communicate to the public, and to myself, a different vision of the things that surround us, that you speak to make clothes, photos, magazines or to write.
Carved in Blue: What inspires you the most?
Andrea: What most inspires me are the people who surround me and how they approach the society that surrounds us. I have always been fascinated by how relationships between people themselves and societies change according to the world around us. As for Isko, I tried to think of a marriage for the new generations, where the concepts of dress code fall, and even denim has always been considered casual fabric, can become couture through new workings and through a new vision.
Locman Presentation during the 94th Pitti Immagine Uomo, June 2018 in Florence, Italy.
Carved in Blue: What is the greatest challenge the denim industry is facing?
Andrea: I think the biggest challenge for the denim industry is to break away from the classic idea of denim that is now in the consumer’s head, that is, that denim garments are denim jackets and five-pocket trousers. I believe that textile innovation can also lead to a stylistic evolution for this fabric.
Carved in Blue: What does Carved in Blue mean to you?
Andrea: Carved in Blue, it means strength and innovation for the denim world, it means support for us students and above all a starting point for a renewal for a more sustainable world.