Mittelmoda

International competition for young designers. It had a modest launch in 1993, with only twelve participants, based on an idea of the Fairs Association of Gorizia, in collaboration with the National Chamber of Italian Fashion and the Italian Textile Association. Today, Mittelmoda selects young designers and students from 367 different fashion schools across 56 countries. Each year the participants have to present their collections and portfolios by May. The 36 winning designers receive financial awards and the opportunity of work experience with some of the most important Italian companies. The competition aims to promote freedom of creativity among the young and to give them the chance to enter the reality and needs of the fashion system.
&Quad;2002, September. Mittelmoda celebrated its tenth anniversary and changed its name to The Fashion Award. To mark the anniversary it organized three exhibitions and a workshop, in addition to the usual runway shows. Mittelmoda: 10 Years, Other Fashion, and Lace in Costume and Fashion were held contemporaneously in a single large hall in the fair building in Gorizia. The first show, 10 Years, comprised a gallery of large-scale photographs of previous winners. The second, Other Fashion, was an atelier of sculptures wearing original and creative garments: for example, the Spanish designer Suzy Gomez’s metallic dress, the dress made of plastic bottles by Enrica Borghi, the chessboard with T-“shirt and ties by Laura Ambrosi, the clothes-climbing furniture by the American David Byrne, the photos by Luisa Raffaelli and Misha Klien, Fritz Kok’s mermaids, and erotic figures by Roy Stuart. The third exhibition, Lace in Costume and Fashion, marked a return to the past with Chantilly lace and clothing from the late nineteenth century from the collection of Marianne Stang. The workshop was based on the theme of the relationship between fashion and ethno-cultural roots. The winner of Mittelmoda in 2002 was a young Australian, Ramon Martin, from the University of Technology in Sydney. His collection was chosen from a group of 36 designers by a jury led by Beppe Modenese. The second prize went to Dimitri Ouvarov from the Moscow State Textile University.