MILAN — Florentine fashion school Polimoda has tapped Massimiliano Giornetti as its first head of fashion design.
A Polimoda alumnus, Giornetti worked for 16 years at Salvatore Ferragamo, from 2010 to 2016 as creative director of the women’s and men’s lines. In 2017, Giornetti started designing the collections of Chinese luxury brand Shanghai Tang, which he exited at the end of 2018.
“Polimoda’s success reflects our ability to understand the spirit of the time and possibly anticipate it. Observing the crisis of large retailers, I think that fashion will soon need a new wave of creativity and well-made products. Polimoda has direct access to made-in-Italy know-how and revels in ethnic, cultural and gender diversity among students; these are ideal conditions for the birth of contemporary design,” said Polimoda director Danilo Venturi. “Meeting Massimiliano was serendipitous: he knows how contemporary fashion works, he is a former student, he reached the highest levels on the international scene and shares my same vision. The school will be a bit more maison with him and this will enable us to once again make our contribution.”
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In his new role, Giornetti, who will officially start working at Polimoda at the beginning of the fall semester in September, is tasked to define a creative angle able to make Polimoda stand out among international fashion schools. He will also identify, in accordance with Venturi, the guidelines for the fashion design course’s final show and be asked to give a boost to the accessories, footwear and knitwear divisions. In addition, he will select new teachers for the fashion design department.
“Polimoda: nomen omen, the ancients said. A multifaceted reality, a demonstration of multiculturalism perfectly interpreting the air du temps. Polyhedral in its nature for the contribution of different people and cultures, carrying their own aesthetic, taste and creative challenges. It is a contemporary melting pot in Florence, the city of the Renaissance; studying here means being stimulated by a variety of aesthetic and visual impulses more unique than any other city in the world. Polimoda is a large and modern laboratory for the fashion creatives of tomorrow; it is the ideal environment to develop an independent spirit and total autonomy of thought,” said Giornetti.
“Returning to Polimoda feels like homecoming,” he added. “It is automatic recovery read backwards. A reloaded version that invokes the strong desire to break patterns that have progressively led to today’s depleted fashion system. This is the perfect time for me to go back to the drawing board, to find the lines and define the silhouette that will determine style of the next decade. This is the ideal environment to enhance all of the creative potential in an individual, the measure of all things; true neo-humanism.”
Polimoda counts 2,300 students from 68 countries enrolled in its undergraduate programs, masters and short courses, many of them developed in collaboration with companies such as Compagnie Financière Richemont, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Valentino, Salvatore Ferragamo and Missoni.
Later this year, Polimoda will inaugurate its third campus at Florence’s Manifattura Tabacchi complex, a former tobacco factory done in a scenic Italian rationalist architecture.