The Italian Embassy in Lisbon hosted a fashion show organized by IED, in collaboration with ModaLisboa, Accademia di Como and Scuola Teatro Musicale to present a selection of projects created by 12 graduates of the IED Network: Carlotta Gadda, Haiqi Zhou, Daniele Dargenio, Simone Smeriglio, Denise Vecchi, Arianna Pejrani, Roberto Niutta, Natalia Arroyas, Miguel Conde Garcia-Mochales, Michel Mahfoud Khaouly, Eloi Sacristan, Ainhize Ganzabal Santiago.
The show explores repetition as a tool for transformation, linking education and Fashion System in a live performance.
The embassy is a fascinating and symbolic space: a threshold, an enclave, a border but also a bridge, a door, a refuge. It is both institution and diplomacy, bureaucracy and residence, representation and protection, organization and prestige. It is a layered system in which invisible and continuous work coexists with moments of public display-where openness and closure, interior and exterior, coexist.
How can this symbolic universe be translated into a fashion show?
Sha Ribeiro and Jacopo Bedussi’s artistic direction of the Lisbon leg of the GTA took shape in the event REPEAT THE ACTION, a fashion show that explores repetition as both a technical tool and a transformative practice. The concept draws inspiration from a conversation between choreographer Lenio Kaklea and curator Caroline Bourgeois about the work of Bruce Nauman, specifically the idea that “freedom is a form of discipline” and that repetition is necessary in order to progress.
Here repetition is not mere reiteration, but insistence: a continuous coming and going through which qualitative change takes place. Practice – doing and redoing – creates a threshold beyond which gestures are transformed.
What initially appears complex or unnatural, through repeated engagement, becomes fluid, accessible and charged with new meanings.
Fashion is presented as a virtuous system, capable of challenging the conformity of traditional staging. The fashion show proposes an open and permeable dialogue in which individual creative proposals coexist with hybrid forms – music, dance, performance – all converging on common themes: the body, sociality, collectivity, exchange.
At the same time, REPEAT THE ACTION goes beyond the classic fashion show format, embracing the performance dimension as an essential part of the narrative. The body in space, sound and rhythm become materials of exploration, merging with clothes and gestures to create a multidisciplinary experience. The project also involves local talent from Lisbon, fostering new encounters and exchanges that enrich the dialogue between different cultural and artistic contexts.
This is not a collective work in the conventional sense, but a constellation of individual paths that together create something greater than the sum of the individual parts. Disciplines intertwine, hierarchies dissolve and boundaries-both material and metaphorical-fall away. In this joyful loss of boundaries, in the unexpected transformation of the real into celebration, a sense of new visionary hope emerges.
