The Polimoda Graduate Show 2025 took place inside Florence’s Stazione Leopolda, a former train station turned industrial venue, and opened this season’s edition of Pitti Uomo 108. Long known as a platform for new talent, the show this year presented something more defined: a clear statement of fashion as not just clothing, but a structured way of thinking, a design language built on ideas, critique and reconstruction.
Under the direction of Massimiliano Giornetti, with styling by Serge Girardi and sound design by Frédéric Sanchez, the show featured 20 collections created by graduating students. Each represented the outcome of years of study and practice, translated into focused, personal collections. The work reflected a shared interest in identity, heritage, displacement and the mixing of cultural influences, not just as topics but as central elements of the garments themselves.
Many of the collections explored complex themes, but a few stood out for their precision and clarity in both execution and concept.
Derin Kemer (Turkey)
“Bitch Boss”
With “Bitch Boss”, Derin Kemer created a sculptural tribute to her mother, a single parent who spent her life working in a male-dominated world without ever losing her presence. The silhouettes, broad shoulders, dramatic hips, confident lines—were not just inspired by power, but inherited from it. This was strength made visible.
Textures ranged from cotton poplins and wool knits to walnut wood, a material Kemer incorporated as a symbol of permanence and legacy. It referenced a carved door from an Ottoman palace, now one of her mother’s most treasured possessions. Kemer’s vision was direct. These garments were not designed to carry women. Women carry them.
Grigory Fedemko (Russia/Israel)
“Rise and Fall”
Grigory Fedemko approached the runway like a monologue on power, how it is gained, displayed, and ultimately lost. His collection, “Rise and Fall”, unfolded in two movements. One was inspired by the oil-fueled rise of 20th-century industrialism, the other by the theatrical decline of the Russian Empire. The former referenced oil rigs, heavy machinery, and the anonymous laborers behind global industrialization. The latter evoked the doomed grandeur of the Romanovs and the militarization of imperial identity.
His choice of materials underscored these tensions. Felted wools and leather conveyed brutality and control, while synthetic fabrics like vinyl-treated gabardines mirrored the slick residue of petrol stains. This was not just costuming power but studying its corrosion from within.
Eseniia Rybnikova (Russia)
“The Architect”
Inspired by Orwell’s 1984, Eseniia Rybnikova’s “The Architect” was built around a single question: what kind of world do you construct when you are the one holding the tools? Her muse was a woman part scientist, part visionary, creating her own universe through instinct, experimentation, and obsession. The garments reflected this energy, layering everyday pieces with monolithic shapes and fractured surfaces.
Plastic embroidery, colored glass, mosaic textures, and translucent overlays created tension between structure and spirit. The influence of brutalist architecture was clear, but so was the rebellion against its severity. These clothes imagined tyranny and tenderness colliding inside a single frame, challenging what it means to build a future with your own hands.
Viktoria Huang Ying (Hungary/China)
“Under the Plum Blossom Tree”
Huang Ying’s collection was a tribute to maternal strength and invisible sacrifice. Titled “Under the Plum Blossom Tree”, it emerged from her return to China and a reencounter with her mother, not just as a caregiver, but as a woman with her own past. The story that unfolded was one of endurance, illness, and resilience. It asked what remains of a woman when parts of her life have been stripped away, and how beauty persists in unexpected forms.
Materials were chosen to reflect that duality. Wool felt coats offered a sense of protection. Sheer silks hinted at the softness of petals and fleeting grace. Leather and silver hardware introduced texture and resistance. In these garments, Huang gave form to her mother’s radiance and vulnerability. This was fashion as elegy, but also as affirmation.
Isabella Valdez (Perú)
“Nasty Child”
With “Nasty Child”, Isabella Valdez explored the emotional landscape of immigration through the perspective of a young person. Based on her own experience of moving across countries from the age of fourteen, the collection framed displacement not as loss, but as a journey marked by wonder, confusion, and adaptation. She created a fictional character, The Explorer, who adventurously travels around the world seeking out their home, while getting to know it.
Materials were central to the narrative. Valdez combined natural fibers like cotton, wool, and linen with upcycled sailing textiles, evoking both historical references to 19th-century children’s clothing and the oceanic journeys of her imaginary traveler. The silhouettes moved between softness and structure, nostalgia and navigation. Nasty Child emerged as a quiet rebellion against fixed identity, capturing the tension and openness of becoming.
Polimoda’s class of 2025 didn’t offer easy conclusions. These designers proposed fashion that questions, remembers, and resists simplification. Their collections spoke not to trends, but to internal narratives marked by personal histories, displacement, and radical self-definition.
Photos: Courtesy of Polimoda
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Highlights from the Collections
