This year the theme running through the Felt Fashion Week held at the magnificent premises of Progetto Manifattura, Rovereto, north Italy was:

“what is the most important aspect in your work” – the process per se or the finished product?

The Creative Process, therefore. Creativity, as the process, regards life and not just professional training in spite of how impressive it might be.

When I create I do not have the perception of a beginning nor an end. I feel an immense pleasure in being in such a concentrated state, an almost divine experience which makes me forget about the time passing.

Time conceived as a process, as a continuum.

My heart beats fast during the design phase and I try to give form to my emotions. My wish is to explore essential shapes and signs.

Not a body made object but a body that acts on the dress and transforms it.

‘Dress’ that enhances the interiority of the wearer. ‘Dressing” protection.

New dimensions, new spaces, new volumes, new forms and signs. It’s all this, which emerges “during”, in the middle, what interests me the most: the process. Not the finished product.

This week was perceived and experienced as time dedicated to our ourselves and our creative process. Natural, organic raw materials, recycled materials and natural dyeing. An indispensable opportunity to put into question, with joyful passion and clear disillusionment, myths and rituals of the fashion sector. A time for reflecting profoundly on this sector which is showing signs of a deep crisis and requires a systematic re-foundation on the fundamental principles and values of production sustainability.

The work has been demanding and intense, both from an individual and team perspective. The time spent together provided an opportunity for a moment of meditation, sharing and growth. The know-how on raw materials, but above all transmitting innovative ways of interpreting an Eco-Fashion based on Eco-Textiles.

Raw materials and techniques serve simply as support for this concept.

Celeste, Claudia, Elisa, Elisabetta, Laura, Marianne, Marta, Petra, Susanna and I worked together to fully savour the process, honouring the creative element which is inside all of us, implicitly respecting rhythms, emotions and the philosophy of life.

Agostina Zwilling