THE CUBE ARCHIVE INDUSTRY PROJECT | BA IN COSTUME & FASHION

There are places where fashion stops being pure imagination and becomes method, depth and awareness. For the third-year students of the BA in Costume & Fashion at Accademia Costume & Moda, one of those places was San Giovanni Valdarno, in the heart of Tuscany, as they stepped inside TheCube Archive.

TheCube Archive is an exclusive menswear vintage fashion archive dedicated to research, inspiration and rental for industry professionals. It is a space where garments are never merely objects, but cultural traces — structures to be analysed, stories to be understood before they are reinterpreted.

Welcoming the students were Corinna Chiassai, Co-founder & Art Director, and Marius Hordijk, Co-founder. Their vision is clear: research is not a preliminary phase, but the very core of the creative process. Education, as they emphasise, is always a reciprocal exchange — an ongoing dialogue between experience and new generations of creative minds.

Moving through the archive means observing tailoring constructions, functional details and proportions born from real needs and, over time, transformed into aesthetic language. The students were able to handle the garments, examine their internal structures and understand how a seam or a volume can define identity. It is an experience that reshapes perception: one learns to read a garment, not simply to look at it.

Within this context, the Industry Project developed in collaboration with TheCube Archive focuses on a contemporary reflection on sustainability — not as an abstract concept, but as a concrete design practice. Upcycling and recyclingbecome tools to generate new aesthetics, transforming reuse into a conscious act and a narrative choice.

Students were asked to develop a complete proposal capable of combining transformation with original design. The topwear originates from the intervention on reclaimed knitwear garments, deconstructed and hybridised with other materials to create new silhouettes in which memory remains visible yet evolves in a contemporary direction. Alongside these pieces, trousers designed entirely from scratch ensure conceptual and formal coherence, while accessories created through the recovery of leather and existing fabrics become an integral part of the overall vision.

The opportunity to present their work directly to Corinna and Marius Hordijk, Cofounder, marked a pivotal moment. Sharing projects with professionals who engage daily with archives and creatives means confronting a critical gaze, refining conceptual clarity and understanding the strategic value of research. It is in exchanges like these that a student begins to think — and operate — as a designer.

Experiences of this kind reflect an educational approach in which theory and practice are inseparable. The archive becomes a laboratory, dialogue becomes growth, sustainability becomes language. It is a pathway that builds vision before collections, and teaches students to search before they design.

In an industry in constant transformation, the ability to read the past in order to imagine the future distinguishes a superficial project from a conscious one. It is within this space of research, exchange and experimentation that a new generation of designers takes shape — one capable not merely of following trends, but of anticipating them.

Choosing a path such as the BA in Costume & Fashion of Accademia Costume & Moda means stepping into an environment where every experience contributes to tangible growth, shaped by direct engagement with the industry, experimentation, and vision. It is not simply about acquiring technical skills, but about developing a perspective that can interpret the present and anticipate the future, through real projects, meaningful connections, and ongoing dialogue with professionals. It is within this kind of context that talent is given the space to evolve, becoming both a conscious practice and a clear direction.