Polimoda International Institute of Fashion Design and Marketing

• Year of foundation: 1986
• Location: Florence, Italy
• Language of instruction: English, Italian
• Number of students: 1500 people
• Type of studying : full-time.

Polimoda International Institute of Fashion Design and Marketing was founded in 1986 as the Politecnico Internazionale della Moda: at the origins of the university were two international fashion center, two leaders and pioneering the industry - FIT (New - York) and Emilio Pucci (Florence). Shirley Goodman, former executive vice president and executive director of the Fashion Industry Education Foundation, and Don Emilio Pucci, founder of the famous Florentine brand, have come together to create a world-class fashion educational center. In 2006, the institute was headed by Ferruccio Ferragamo and Linda Loppa, in 2011 they opened the campus at Villa Favard. In 2015, Polimoda Design Laboratory, settled in Scandicci, combining design space, sample making, and educational activities in one area. In 2015, Polimoda became the venue for the conference IFFTI (International Fund for Fashion Technology Institutes). In 2016, the Institute was headed by Danilo Venturi, an expert on modern fashion and fashion education with experience in managing brands in the creative direction.

The undergraduate, graduate, short-term courses offered by Polimoda combine the heritage of the past with new research and creativity. Teachers of the educational institution - experts of the fashion industry, they offer educational courses, created on the basis of their own work experience, adapt programs to changes in the fashion landscape as needed.

One of the objectives of Polimoda is to reduce the gap between education and industry. The institute bridges the gap between educational structures and production in order to provide real understanding, experience, knowledge, necessary for industry professionals for the most realistic understanding of the fashion world.

Polimoda offers proven and safe housing services for students living outside the home as well as those who come to Florence from abroad. The university cooperates with various real estate agencies that can meet any student housing needs, their provisions in relation to the Polimoda offices. They have access to various types of accommodation:

• Student residences
• Shared apartments
• Apartments
• Houses for a few people
• Private rooms.

The institute makes profitable deals with restaurants, shops, bookstores, and many other services to make students stay in Florence more enjoyable. The university holds a variety of activities for students at Villa Favard, Design Lab.

In the old conservatory Villa Favard, the Caffetteria bar is located, surrounded by a green garden overlooking Lungarno, the hills of Florence. It offers exclusive services for students: a pleasant pastime during the break between classes, evening gatherings, allowing you to feel part of the international atmosphere of the institute.

• Polimoda is known throughout the world for its independence of thinking, vigorous activity, desire to unite business, design at all levels. According to Business of Fashion, Polimoda is the best fashion institute in Italy - one of the top 10 fashion universities in the world. It combines the know-how of Italian design, production with international vision, high standards of education.
• Polimoda teachers work in prestigious companies around the world in such areas as fashion marketing, management, finance, branding, communications, artistic guidance, trend forecasting, shoes, textile design, as well as design models and clothing. The direct experience of these specialists is a vital resource for the institute; it guarantees the practice-oriented nature of the teaching methods based on our own developments, relevant feedback, and experience in project implementation.
• The campuses, the equipment of the university stimulate the creative growth of students: the Renaissance Villa Favard, modern design laboratories, Manifattura Tabacchi, the Polimoda library, where one of the most significant collections of fashion publications in Europe is located.
• 70% of the students of the institute came from abroad to get high-quality fashion education, to become part of the student community of Florence.

Students study on the basis of three campuses in Florence: at the historic Villa Favard, in the modern design laboratory and in the new campus Manifattura Tabacchi - whether it is a building with a centuries-old history or an ultra-modern laboratory, all these spaces are centers of activity, creativity, new ideas that define the future fashion at the lower level of Villa Favard there is a library - the first European fashion library, numbering 22,000 fashion books, photos, 400 full collections of archives of magazines.

The design laboratory is located in a strategically significant area known for the production of leather goods and clothing. This gives lab design students an affinity for an industry unknown to any other international fashion school. Fabric samples, the latest sewing machines, classrooms, technical workshops are equipped with modern equipment for the manufacture of knitwear, sewing, modeling clothes, shoe prototyping.

Manifattura Tabacchi is located in the western part of the central district of Florence, a sample of the Italian rationalistic architecture of the 1940s, undergoing extensive reconstruction to become a new center of modern urban culture. Its area is 6000 sq.m. including:

• Classrooms
• Photo studios
• Art Labs
• Workshops for tailoring, knitwear
• Computer labs
• Modern audience.

Five computer classrooms are equipped with more than 120 graphic workstations, computers, scanners, graphics tablets. Thanks to technological equipment, you can trace the life cycle of fashionable products from research to the stage of promotion, retail. Through partnerships with leading companies in the industry that provide their products, students are embedded into a context very similar to actual production from the first lessons.

Polimoda is the first school in Italy that used Visual Retailing 4 for visual merchandising, Atelier98 for retail management. Classrooms are equipped with CAD software for modeling clothing (Lectra, Gerber with a dedicated digital converter A0), software for shoes, accessories (Elitron), 3D modeling available for PC, MAC with Rhino.

Dates of trimesters

Requirements for applicants:

• Bachelor applicants must have a high school diploma
• Applicants to Master, Double Master programs must have a bachelor's degree or work experience of at least two years in an area corresponding to the profile of study.
• Applicants for a seasonal course or one short course do not need any qualifications.

Stages of admission:

• Filling, sending an application for the selected program online
• Filling in the form, online registration for undergraduate and graduate programs
• Interview with a leading teacher of the course (future bachelors, masters)
• In case of confirmation of receipt - payment, completion of the online registration procedure.

Polimoda seeks to enrich and transform the future of its students by awarding a series of scholarships of 1,000 euros. These awards are distributed annually in order to encourage academic success, to increase the diversity of the student population.

• Guardianship services during the studies
• Student supervision