Exploring the boundaries between theory and practice in Fashion Design at IUAV University of Venice : the case of U/U/U/

Still today, in Italy, fashion design finds it difficult to relate to the dimension of university research, and this is perhaps the consequence of a lack of familiarity with the academic world: only rarely has fashion been taught in universities and it is not considered an autonomous academic discipline. Since its foundation in 2005, the BA programme in Fashion Design at IUAV University of Venice has been actively combining its design workshops with an attitude towards research in the field of fashion studies, with innovative work being carried out specifically in the field of teaching methodologies: students are asked to constantly question and discuss teaching practices and techniques – which tend to be taken for granted – as well as the concept of authorship in design. This approach – quite unique in the Italian academic field – is presented in this article through a discussion of a project originated by designer Mariavittoria Sargentini, founder and owner of the brand Marvielab, and course leader of the first-year Fashion Design Workshop at IUAV. Together with her students, Sargentini started a new collection called U/U/U/, which stands for ‘unconstrained, unisex, uniform’, after asking a group of students to redefine the concept of the daily uniform through their own interpretations. The result is a capsule collection, made of twelve looks, as the expression of a collective author. Thus, Sargentini’s U/U/U/ reflects an idea of fashion design that defies current concepts of authorship, and that questions our concept of the basic/daily uniform through an active design practice that fuses theory and object-based observations.