A + Mani

“A più mani: creativity and archives” is a project that explores the utilisation of the historical patrimony of fashion in creative ways, according to the typology of diverse collections and up-to-date technology that can create new services. Through the collaboration between the Fashion Advanced Design Studio of Politecnico di Milano of the year 2018-2019 and three important fashion companies that each boast a vast archive, new scenarios were generated for both the commercial and educational use of such archives. This book presents the research and proposals of the students, as well as the contributions of the professors.

Eugenia Chiara
Eugenia Chiara holds a Master and PhD in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication from Politecnico of Milano. She works as a designer and researcher, with a special focus on local impact design and social innovation and uses the action-research method to develop projects that merge research, teaching and professional activities. Eugenia has worked in different countries: Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil and India. She collaborates with several private and public institutions, such as Politecnico of Milano, Poli.design, Ard&nt Institute, and GD Goenka University of New Delhi, te- aching and developing international and national research projects.

Zoe Romano
Zoe Romano is a craftivist, digital strategist and lecturer who focusses on social innovation, women in tech, digital fabrication and open design. She graduated in Philosophy and worked for several years in digital communication while, at the same time, developing her social skills as a media hacktivist on precarity, material and immaterial labour in the creative industries. She worked for Arduino as a digital strategist from 2013 to 2017 and then co-founded WeMake Makerspace in 2014, where she now works full-time on R&D, training and digital social innovation projects.

Nicoletta Di Gaetano
An independent researcher and textile designer, Nicoletta Di Gaetano pursued classical studies and Degrees in the field of Communication. Since 2006, she has been rediscovering the heritage that is linked to the Project of Textile Design, going deep into the art of hand weaving and merging linguistic materials with textiles. As a lecturer and consultant, she works with various museums in the technical study of the fabric of art, both ancient and contemporary, and conducts her own classes. In 2015 sheco-founded Officine Contesto, a Workshop that strongly believes in the cultural importance of manual thinking in the applied arts, where prototypes, unique pieces and bespoke textile collections are created.

Francesca Rossi
Francesca Rossi holds a Law Degree and Master’s Degree in the Fashion System from the University of Bologna. With 25 years of stylistic consultancy in fashion design, she carries out personal research on the culture of fashion in Italy, understood as being the investigation and consultation of sources, the expression of skills and cultures that have been handed down over the centuries. The passion for Italian tailoring, the future vision and the most advanced design te- chnologies cannot ignore the memory of the artisan gesture as an expression of balance and competence that gives stylistic intuition a method of appli- cation and transforms talent into act.