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The IFM asked its first and second year students, many of whom sport a fluid wardrobe, to imagine a skirt for Kiddy Smile, singer and figure of the voguing scene. A deliberately degenerated challenge.
Arriving at the French Fashion Institute (IFM), a green pavilion on the Quai d’Austerlitz in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, this Tuesday at the end of November, the first thing you notice are the long, slender legs and slightly hairy faces of a young man in a gray miniskirt, pointy heels, and a big red and black parka. It’s barely 6°C outside, which doesn’t seem to bother the students of this school where good looks often take precedence over seasonal colds. Three meters further, a short blond crosses the vast hall in a pale blue embroidered skirt. A teacher rushes into an elevator dressed in a navy blue pleated model. Something to turn the eye of a reader of Current values. Here, no one pays attention to the fluidity of each other’s locker rooms.
On November 29, around fifty first-year students are taking part in the “Kiddy Smile Challenge” during which they must present a skirt made for the singer and figure in the voguing scene, whose “plus size” body – it measures almost 2 meters – challenges students more accustomed to working on mannequin sizes. Each of the 25 groups entered their project into a category – couture, ballroom (for the dance floor), travel, loungewear (to wear at home), sportswear, workwear – and had a week to develop the piece and try to be selected by Kiddy Smile who knows about clothes, costumes and contests.
The artist accepted Thierry Ronden’s invitation