If anyone ever thought that not being able to touch the texture of a fabric a student made would be an impediment to a career in fashion, they were wrong. “You can learn to cook through a tutorial, not feel the taste and, even so, learn to cook,” says the well-known designer Francisco Ayala, president of the Argentine Chamber of Fashion, referring to the launch of EsCam, the school of that institution, whose launch is scheduled for the 20th of this month.
None of the tailors who in 1905 founded what has become this non-profit chamber today could have imagined that this would happen. The pandemic made designers connect with each other, and monitor the size law, for example. After that experience, the Chamber realized that they could “democratize knowledge, federalize it, give tools to those who are connected to the world of fashion, and that one way to do it is to give virtual seminars. “In-person education means that, for example, in our case, people have to come to study in Buenos Aires. Virtuality allows us to be federal”, explains Ayala.
-Télam: Did social changes such as the appearance of non-binary clothing or the irruption of new beauty canons make it necessary to modify education in reference to fashion?
-Francisco Ayala (FA): We have been seeing that the irreversible trend is towards inclusiveness. It is what we have to do, what is missing. You have to think of other types. I will present my new collection at the Palacio Paz, and I will do it with all kinds of bodies. I am going to work with women with gray hair and with totally ordinary people, because I think such a hegemonic vision of beauty is very stigmatizing.
“I like to work with Latin American, pre-Hispanic textiles, and with native fibers. So, I thought of something that defines us and that is absolutely contemporary: the poncho. I added zippers, pockets, a hood, and I make them with textiles from Catamarca, with llama fibers that cooperatives in the interior of the country work with. Well, that poncho, for example, has no gender. It can be used by both women and men ”, the president of the Chamber elaborates.
Within the framework of social changes and inequities in the world of fashion, Ayala says that, “for example, what happens with sizes is discriminatory. The law says that all sizes must be approved, and that is going to take a while. That is where virtuality also comes in, because if there is certainty that the size is what it says they say it is, people will be more encouraged to buy online ”, he adds.
It is within this framework that the EsCam (School of the Argentine Chamber of Fashion) was born, where, to begin with, they will launch virtual workshops, which are five, designed in classes of one and a half hours each. The amounts are more than accessible, since they cost 8,000 thousand pesos. “We don’t have to earn money, but to be able to train professionals,” explains Ayala.
-Télam: What happens in virtual teaching with practical issues such as not touching a cloth that had to be textured?
-FA: I asked myself the same thing, and people told me that most of the information was collected from tutorials, which I think is true, because the jobs are very well done and they learned in the pandemic through videos. For this reason, although for now we are framed in the theoretical, we do not rule out giving practical workshops.
One by one, the first seminars
The world of Dante Alighieri and its reflection in fashion, dictated by Patricia Rafelini, degree in museology. The proposal is that, from Dante’s work, the reflection that the story has from an intertextual reading of the Western fashion system can be seen.
The second workshop is Design, analysis and assembly of collection, with the professor Carla Desidero, and it is designed to be useful, also, for someone who has a line of decorative objects, for example, and for those who have to generate any production system for pieces that have to tell a story and have creative and technical elements in order not to fail. in the attempt.
The third seminar is called Fashion and Communicationby the journalist Cynthia Ijelman. The workshop is aimed at teaching how a brand or designer relates to traditional and digital media. The difference of a note, a public note, or the world of influencers.
follows him Fashion Law, dictated by the lawyer Pamela Echeverria. Tools will be taught to enter the world of intellectual property, copyright, fashion brands, invention patents.
Finally, Understand the phenomenon of fashionby Andrea Izzo Capella, who in addition to being an architect is the creator and director of the EsCam project. It deals with the difference between fashion, design, dress and history. It is based on the fact that there are people who have an approach to fashion and who with common sense can create, but with the tools that will be given here, they will have a deep connection with fashion.
