Project Highlights from HSE’s Master’s Programme in Fashion

Over the past year our students and graduates of the Master’s Programme ‘Fashion’ participated in a diverse array of projects. The emerging designers put on two of their own fashion shows at Rizhsky Station as part of Arts Night 2018 as well as the large festival Telling Stories, participated in exhibitions, collaborated with prominent brand names, and opened a joint showroom in the Klebozavod (Bread Factory) space.

‘From the very beginning, when we launched our master’s programme in fashion in the HSE Art and Design School, there were two things we wanted to do: firstly, to make the programme comparable to internationally renowned schools of fashion, since, after all, it is precisely at the master’s level that you have the most prestigious fashion schools in London, in Paris, and in Antwerp. The master’s level is where you get the necessary experience and understanding to enter the fashion market with your brand,’ says Anzor Kankulov, programme supervisor. ‘Secondly, students need to gain real practical experience in a master’s level programme and do work in conditions that are comparable to the real industry. Therefore, we put particular emphasis on collaboration with well-known brands on projects that are based in the real world of that fashion business as much as possible.’

Graduates of the master’s programme gain the necessary skills to successfully join the modern fashion industry with their own brands or become professionals in diverse areas of the industry, from trend analysis and store merchandising to executing fashion shoots and directing fashion shows.

Fashion Show at Arts Night

Students put on a show of their new collections at the NewSchoolOldSchool Festival at Rizhsky Station as part of Moscow’s Arts Night.

The collections incorporated the influences/styles from the Soviet era and the nineties. In order to underline the significance of the link between generations and the widening of beauty standards, the show had models of widely varying ages, including models from the Oldushka, a modeling agency for models aged 50 and up.

Ekaterina Pavelko, programme curator: ‘We are proud of our master’s students’ projects and will certainly not pass up the chance to brag about them. The show at Rizhsky Station on Arts Night is an example of this. Everything came together perfectly—the location, which was a magnificent architectural monument, the lighting, the sound, the music—everything worked together to show the student collections on models of ages ranging from 18-65 in the most compelling way possible. For our grad students, this was also a necessary and invaluable experience—putting together a well thought-out visual concept, conducting a casting call, producing a show, doing solid backstage work—I am sure that all of this will be useful to them more than once in their future professional endeavors.’

HSE Art and Design School’s First Showroom

This past winter, HARDSHOWROOM, the first showroom of the HSE Art and Design School, opened at Marsakov, a retail complex located at Khlebozavod. Presenting their SS19 collections were graduates and students of bachelor’s and master’s programmes: Diana Raimzhanova, Anna Korneenkova, Darya Lukash, Ekaterina Titova, Natalya Estler, and Darya Belousova.

In addition to the collections, the showroom displayed limited edition T-shirts that were made specially for the event.

Anzor Kankulov: ‘At the end of last year the graduate students and I made a showroom at Marsakov at Khlebozavod (North Flacon). The students made it themselves, from finalizing and selecting everything to communicating with customers and the press. It was a pretty challenging but utterly invaluable experience—when you come to understand the importance of each and every detail—from the idea of the thing itself to what the sales tag is going to look like.’

Collaboration of Flacon x Mardo

Model and fashion designer Andrei Mardo, founder of Mardo and graduate of the Art and Design School’s Master’s programme, developed the design of the Flacon magazine-themed cosmetics bag.

The theme of the cosmetics bag was Flacon x Mardo — Rehab, and it contained 16 skin renewal products. The color scheme of the bag served as a reference to his debut collection, Mardo Disarmed, which was previously presented in the Dear Progress Showroom in Paris.

Andrei Mardo: ‘The driving factor for doing a collaboration with Flacon magazine was our common views on beauty, or, more precisely, its diversity. We used eco-leather as the material to show people that it’s just as good as its natural counterpart, which causes harm to animals, and even now it’s more relevant than ever before. The cosmetics bag conveys the main idea of the brand—the combining of the incompatible: I brought together smooth, round, and sharp geometric forms, just like in the brand logo.’

Strengths Show at Telling Stories

At the Telling Stories Festival, MA students presented a special collective project – Strengths, where they showcased their works created during their first year of the programme.

The show was dedicated to the theme of roles and images that we try on in modern life. ‘We thought about not so much about gender roles, but about how a person feels in life, and what role they take on: the “stronger” sex or the “weaker” one,’ students said of their idea. ‘Everyone inwardly feels weak and vulnerable from time to time, but in the modern world people hides these feelings behind a mask of a “strong person”.’

Pop-up Show at Lunar Hare Showroom

On June 4, at the Lunar Hare Showroom, bachelor’s and master’s students of the ‘Fashion’ programme presented a pop-up exhibition, That was a good year, in which they presented their best works from the 2018-2019 academic year.

15 designers, 25 looks, 4 different course levels — everything that is the pride of School of Design’s ‘Fashion’ programme was on display in one exhibition.

Anzor Kankulov: ‘At the end of the spring we started working with the Lunar Hare Agency. Lunar Hare is one of the fashion market’s leading agencies that represents a number of big brands. Students presented their collections to professional journalists and buyers alongside brands that are already well-known. I think that this experience is worth a lot of lecture hours.’

Graduation Show 2019

As part of the graduation festival at the Museum of Moscow, undergraduate and graduate students of the ‘Fashion’ programme presented original collections at Graduation Show 2019. For programme graduates, the show was a significant event with more than 100 ensembles. Visitors of the Museum of Moscow got to admire collections that were shown for the first time, including the best final collections of programme graduates. Each collection represented its designer’s search for their own theme, their unique perspective, and, of course, their own statement.

Anzor Kankulov: ‘Fashion design as a search, as a concept, and as a statement—these are the three main parameters upon which we base our teaching in the ‘Fashion’ programme at the HSE School of Design. For each student, the culmination of their studies is the creation of their own collection, which expresses their signature designer vision and springs forth from their personal values and creative discoveries.’