De Rerum Natura according to NABA students

Last night, the cloister of the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory of Music in Milan became the meeting point between music and fashion. As every year, the students of the BA in Fashion Design at NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, showcased their best creations, officially becoming part of the "new guard" of the fashion world. 120 looks created by 30 students, previously selected by a jury composed of journalists, industry professionals, and NABA alumni, walked the runway to the notes of Visions, an electronic composition specially created to accompany the show by Conservatory student Gianluca Terlizzi. At the beginning of the show, accompanied by piano music by Daniel Ponticelli, 12 outfits created by students of The Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, also walked the runway, as part of a cultural and academic exchange with NABA.

This year's theme was DE RERUM NATURA, chosen by NABA Fashion Design Advisor Nicoletta Morozzi. Inspired by the famous poem by Lucretius, each student presented on the runway the four looks that best reflect the philosophy behind the work: the essence of all things lies in the knowledge of the universe and the atoms that compose it. The theme stimulated the students' creativity, who began generating ideas from the very start of their third year. Positioned between ancient philosophy and contemporaneity—now defined by the advent of artificial intelligence—the future designers transformed Lucretius’s verses into garments, expressing their own vision of the world and of nature itself. The choice of De Rerum Natura was intentionally aimed at emphasizing the importance of reflection and of asking questions—the only way, perhaps, to keep the past connected to the present and to what the future may hold. War, love, pain, and death: these are the themes that ran through the students’ collections, who, like Lucretius, went beyond mere appearances.

«The 2025 edition of the Fashion Show was a choral and poetic expression […], where fashion and music students combined their knowledge, creating a new performative language. […] As always, it is the students who give meaning and shape: with their energy, their gaze on the present, and their courage to dare, they bring the school to life and project its value into the future. A future that they themselves are helping to imagine and build, with passion, awareness, and vision,» comments NABA Fashion Design Area Leader Colomba Leddi. Once again, the show stands as the result of the joint effort of students, lecturers, and professionals who, though coming from geographically distant places, are united in their desire to learn and to tell stories.