ROME (ITALPRESS) – Established in 2024 from the synergy between Centro di Firenze per la Moda Italiana, Pitti Immagine and UniCredit, the CFMI Academy is growing and evolving from an educational pathway to a Fashion Incubator Project: a call for proposals that aims to support new generations by fostering the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurial drive.Promoted by the Florence Center for Italian Fashion, with UniCredit Main Partner and with Piattaforma Sistema Formativo Moda ETS together with Polimoda as Educational Partners, the CFMI Academy 2025 draws inspiration from the need to start a project research path capable of boosting entrepreneurial ideas capable of combining responsible innovation, sustainability and Made in Italy fashion excellence.The initiative aims to identify, train on multiple levels and launch a new generation of creatives, designers and entrepreneurs in the fashion industry, providing concrete tools to start a business.The call for proposals, launched in October, has gathered as many as 20 projects from the Italian Fashion Design Academies.The selection process will see the emergence of 5 projects involving 15 senior students committed to developing an innovative, sustainable business idea capable of having autonomy in the market.To achieve the goal, the participants will be able to count on the support of teachers from their respective academies and tutors identified by the project partners (CFMI, Pitti Immagine, UniCredit, Polimoda, Piattaforma Sistema Formativo Moda ETS) among experts in the fashion industry and the bank. This will be complemented – from January to June 2025 – by project training workshops and mentoring meetings involving industrial groups at the forefront of Fashion industrial processes. The first event is scheduled to take place in Florence, at Fortezza da Basso, on Thursday, January 30, 2025, the final day of the 96th edition of Pitti Immagine Filati.The call for entries has two judging committees: a technical one, composed of the project partners and the six mentors, which will select the best candidate proposals; and a final one to which professionals, experts and entrepreneurs will also be added.The evaluation criteria will keep the focus on excellence in concept, innovation, experimentation, contamination, values, contemporaneity, design feasibility, communication, and ESG parameters. Depending on the type of projects selected, the initiative’s partners will provide know-how and tools to support the development of the business idea, as well as opportunities for business networking and visibility.The awards ceremony, with the official presentation of the winners, will be held in October 2025 as part of the Fashion Graduate Italia event. “CFMI Academy,” stresses Antonella Mansi, president of the Florence Center for Italian Fashion, “evolves from a seminar-based training moment toward a project path involving students from the best Italian fashion academies. Students are offered the opportunity to participate in a path dedicated to the development of entrepreneurship that can provide them with concrete tools to start a business. In a delicate phase for the fashion-accessory system and with a decrease in the consumption of luxury products, it is courageous but also far-sighted to imagine inserting new stimuli on the market starting “from the bottom,” from the new entrepreneurial visions of those who are at the end of their educational path: this is meant to be a cultural operation of “spreading the spirit of enterprise,” which we believe is very important for a country with manufacturing DNA like Italy.””Supporting new entrepreneurship is an integral part of our mission,” remarks Annalisa Areni, Head of Client Strategies UniCredit. “Through the CFMI Academy, we invest in the training of young talents, offering them the opportunity to concretely immerse themselves in the everyday life of those who work in the fashion supply chain. More specifically, by drawing on our know-how, we intend to equip them with the skills and tools needed to frame the prospects and challenges that, in the short term, they will be called upon to grasp in order to start a sustainable and successful business within one of the leading sectors of Made in Italy. “Among the strategic objectives of the Association Piattaforma Sistema Formativo Moda ETS,” says Matteo Secoli, President of Piattaforma Sistema Formativo Moda ETS, “is to support the new generations by fostering the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurial drive. It is in this context that the participation in the “CFMI Academy” project, launched in October 2024 on the occasion of the 10th edition of the Fashion Graduate Italia event promoted by Piattaforma ETS, fits in. We believe that the synergy with an institution of excellence such as the Florence Center for Italian Fashion can help promote a constructive dialogue between the education sectors and the business world within the fashion market, activating a network that can give rise to joint projects that enhance young talents in the fashion industry.”
– UniCredit press office photo –
(ITALPRESS).
