Unfolding Gianfranco Ferré

“Unfolding Gianfranco Ferré” is an innovative-teaching course, available online for free on the Polimi Open Knowledge platform. It stems from the desire to enhance the designer’s extensive archival holdings, disseminating the material and immaterial culture they preserve through actions of divulgation, augmented access, and forms of ‘spectacularisation’ enabled by new technologies. Through a multidisciplinary approach and the use of diverse multimedia tools – videos, podcasts, and 360° images of archival garments – students are invited to understand, explore, and reinterpret Gianfranco Ferré’s legacy within their own personal and professional paths.

The course is structured over four weeks. The first week is dedicated to the biography of Gianfranco Ferré, presented through an unpublished video created from interviews preserved in the archive. This is followed by an introduction to the Gianfranco Ferré Research Centre, outlining its mission and objectives, together with an overview of the historical archive.

The second week consists of seven thematic lessons, each focused on a key concept in Ferré’s thinking, still highly relevant within today’s theoretical and critical discourse on contemporary fashion. Through an animated reconstruction of the original slides, students can relive the designer’s final lecture, delivered on June 14, 2007 at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano.

The third week is devoted to the exploration of Ferré’s six design principles: the body, matter, colour, detail, volume, and movement. These are examined through the analysis of a selection of archival garments, presented via interactive 360° images and accompanied by technical documentation and working sheets.

The fourth week introduces the podcast “Con Ferré, projects and principles in dialogue”, produced with the participation of journalist Paolo Ferrarini. In this series of conversations, Gianfranco Ferré’s design principles move beyond the archival dimension through dialogues with leading figures in contemporary design, who revisit themes as body, matter, colour, detail, volume, and movement in light of their own practices: Nick Cerioni, Stefania Ricci, Leonardo Sonnoli, Giorgia Lupi, Stefania Ricciardi, and Giulio Iacchetti.