IFFTI Annual Conference Held for First Time in Korea as Venue for Interactions among Global Fashion Schools
The Fashion Design major at the College of Art & Design hosted the 26th Annual Conference of the International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutes (IFFTI), marking the event’s first time in Korea and drawing around 200 global fashion researchers and educators from the world’s most prominent universities to attend the conference in Korea.
The IFFTI Annual Conference is an annual event hosted by the titular organization, which is widely regarded as the hub for interactions among the world’s leading fashion schools. It is the largest and most influential academic event in terms of exchanges among educational institutions in the field of fashion, aiming to discuss the fashion industry and seek professional development through a diverse range of programs, such as research presentations and workshops. IFFTI is comprised of 55 institutions from 23 countries, including Ewha, which became the first and only member from Korea in 2016.
This year’s IFFTI Annual Conference was mainly hosted by Ewha for a week starting on Monday, April 22, and included a tour of fashion sites in Dongdaemun and Seongsu-dong, Seoul. Meanwhile, from Tuesday, April 23 to Thursday, April 25, various related events were held on the Ewha campus under the theme of “Fashion Towards Post-Humanism.”
Examining the theme from the perspective of scholars who study, teach, and create fashion as a field that cannot exist in separation from the human body and mind, this conference served as a venue to explore the new meaning of humanity and discuss various issues related to fashion in the era of post-humanism.
The conference kicked off at Emerson Chapel on Wednesday, April 24 with an opening speech video by Dior’s Creative Director Maria Grazia Chiuri, followed by keynote speeches by Kolon FnC Vice President Han Kyung-ae, Art Director Seo Young-hee, and Dr. Jeon In-yeoung, CTO of CLO Virtual Fashion. In addition, the ECC lecture rooms and the ECC Theater showcased around 90 research outcomes, including oral and poster presentations, as well as creative research, by researchers from around the world. Lecture rooms in the ECC, the College of Art & Design, and the Graduate School of Design, as well as the Fashion Design Research Institute, hosted workshops conducted by scholars from the UK, the Netherlands, and India on themes such as avatars, artificial intelligence, and sustainable crafts, alongside art workshops by six majors from the College of Art & Design.
In addition, the College of Art & Design held a competition for students from IFFTI institutions worldwide on the theme of “Fashion Towards Post-Humanism,” and selected 10 finalists to hold the “IFFTI 2024 Ewha Fashion Film Awards” at the campus art movie theater Art House MOMO located in the ECC. The college also organized a special exhibition titled “Questions to Question,” which explores the questions we need to ask as we encounter the era of post-humanism.
This year’s IFFTI conference is significant in that it not only shared presentations by numerous researchers on a wide range of fields, such as fashion design, fashion technology, fashion business, and fashion education, to help understand the timeless and groundbreaking context of fashion research, but also brought together global fashion scholars in Seoul. Ewha’s Fashion Design major plans to use the hosting of this conference to strengthen its global research and education network centered on fashion, which it will seek to actively apply in its undergraduate and graduate curriculum.
