The Island of Creativity
Borbonese and Parsons Paris cherish craft traditions and small communities with a responsible project created by international students.
“We thought a true dialogue with the new generations can only be established by having concrete exchanges with them.” So Alessandro Pescara, CEO of Borbonese, described the brand’s fundamental relationship with students at fashion schools through the Officina Borbonese project, launched in 2018. The Officina is a workshop that enables the young creatives involved to reinterpret the brand starting from its icons and most representative products. Pescara has described it as “a general space of creativity, which offers new interpretations of our iconic products as well as new forms of communication, an exchange between the company and the school that unites the world of production with the creative imagination.” In 2020 Officina Borbonese started working with Parsons Paris – the European branch of the Parsons School of Design, New York – on the creation of the fully sustainable project, Savoy Faire. As its starting point for the work by the young people, it took the tradition of tapestry in Sardinian craft weaving, since Sardinia has historically ties to Piedmont, the brand’s home. The students then developed this theme both by cherishing local cultures and using materials from controlled supply chains. To understand the importance of these factors, they worked with the women’s cooperative Su Trobasciu based in Mogoro, a small Sardinian town. Its manager Wilda Scanu helped them discover the ancient techniques for weaving tapestries. Culminating at the end of January with an assessment by a team from the brand and external experts, Savoy Faire identified the students who distinguished themselves in the creation of a new icon bag for the brand, as a reinterpretation of the heritage of Borbonese and these Sardinian techniques. The finalists who will see their designs presented in the brand’s Sales Campaign SS 2022 are Alice LeSter, Caterina Masoni and Elena Marshall, and finally Lara Gerlach.