IED presents "UNFOLD / Sudden Awareness of Now" The IED Milano year-end exhibition celebrates the creativity of a generation

To mark the end of the academic year, the spaces of IED Milano were transformed into a vast living laboratory of ideas, forms and reflections. The end-of-year event brought together approximately sixty Fashion Design thesis collections, enriched by audiovisual installations, live performances, sound design projects and a temporary club hosted in the school's underground spaces.

The chosen title, UNFOLD / Sudden Awareness of Now, suggests the idea of unfolding and making visible what a generation carries within itself, often still unexpressed. The exhibition goes beyond merely presenting student work, becoming a space for collective inquiry into what it means to be young today: a present marked by rapid change, economic and social instability, but also by unprecedented creative opportunities.

The central question running throughout the entire exhibition is twofold: what does it mean to be young in an era of accelerated transformation? And what can a garment reveal beyond its material surface? Fashion steps out of its purely aesthetic role to become a critical instrument capable of questioning reality. Through fabrics, silhouettes, details and stylistic choices, the students explore themes such as identity, conditional freedom, sustainability and the relationship between the individual and society.

The school's classrooms and corridors were converted into genuine exhibition spaces. Each thesis collection was presented with care, accompanied by explanatory panels and direct commentary from the graduating students. In the school's Theatre, a large collective tableau took shape: a mosaic of outfits selected from the various collections that enter into dialogue with one another, creating a single sweeping visual narrative. The presentation was supported by a collaboration with Hans Boodt Mannequins, an international company and leader in the production of high-quality mannequins.

"Transforming personal questions and intuitions into collective projects capable of reading the present is the heart of creative education," stressed Danilo Venturi, Director of IED Milano. The exhibition thus becomes a generational perspective shared with the city, where fashion, visual arts, sound and performance interweave to transform uncertainty into active inquiry and awareness.

Umberto Sannino, Head of Fashion School IED Milano and creative director of the exhibition, described the garment as a material and sensory device: what appears on the surface represents only the entry point into deeper layers of meaning. Among the reflections that emerged most powerfully is that of freedom: are we truly free, or are we performing a script whose rules have already been written?

Completing the exhibition journey is the publication Unqualified, which brings together both curricular and extracurricular projects from the various departments of the Fashion school. A further cross-cutting element is provided by the fragrances created in collaboration with the master perfumers of the MANE maison. Students and designers from IED's Milan and Barcelona campuses worked together to develop these olfactory compositions, once again demonstrating the interdisciplinary approach that defines the institution's teaching philosophy.

In the Theatre, alongside the tableau of garments, an immersive audiovisual installation was set up, bringing two complementary dimensions into dialogue: on one side, the external world — chaotic and complex — conveyed through moving images, electronic rhythms and percussive sounds; on the other, an interior space, suspended and fragile, where the individual searches for points of orientation.

Carlotta Cattaneo, Head of Visual Arts School IED Milano, drew on the thinking of Edgar Morin: "Navigating an ocean of uncertainties through an archipelago of certainties." The installation and the live performances by Sound Design students explored precisely this tension, blending acoustic and electronic instruments, classical and experimental languages.

The experience then extended into the school's underground spaces, transformed for the occasion into a temporary club. Here, DJ sets and live performances served not merely as entertainment, but as a further instrument for reading and interpreting the present, confirming the role of club culture as a laboratory for aesthetic and social innovation.

The exhibition UNFOLD / Sudden Awareness of Now thus offered a vivid and polyphonic panorama of the creativity of new generations, demonstrating how a school can be a place where the uncertainty of the present moment is welcomed, questioned and transformed into concrete, visionary and deeply relevant proposals.