MDV x IED: Marco De Vincenzo is adding the role of mentor to his résumé.
The creative director of Etro has been named academic mentor of IED, an acronym for European Institution of Design. He will serve in the Milan campus of the fashion school, mentoring about 500 undergraduate students of the fashion design and shoes and accessories design courses.
This marks a return to his roots for the Sicilian designer, who graduated from IED in Rome in 2000. “I have never really left the school behind. Several years ago it represented a magical, enlightening moment for me, one of great sharing of my passion with [similar] people. So going back to school renews this feeling,” said De Vincenzo.
“Only today I have the experience that I didn’t have back then and that I can now offer to people in the same way others did with me. It’s like a handover,” he added.
Students at IED.
Courtesy of IED
De Vincenzo will oversee specific sessions with students from the different classes, touching on many themes to inspire and support talents in defining the concept they will base their collections on, as well as help with their development. Topics will range from enhancing cultural identities to attention to environment and resources, as well as exploring the relationship between human touch and new technologies.
The latter include AI, which De Vincenzo recently experimented with. As reported earlier this week, he collaborated with digital artist and prompt designer Silvia Badalotti on creating the new, AI-generated advertising campaign for Etro.
“AI looks scary because we don’t really know everything about it but we’ll learn to use it. I was very fascinated by it,” said De Vincenzo, mentioning that the project he worked on “showed me that the human figure remains fundamental in the process.”
“AI is a medium like a camera or a computer, it’s nothing more than that. As far as I know, the filter of the human person that guided me into this parallel world was fundamental,” he added.
Olivia Spinelli, head of the IED Milano fashion school, praised De Vincenzo for bringing an interesting and “cultured vision of fashion, made up of a series of elements which he effectively transfers into the clothes and collections he designs.”
“In addition to his creative standpoint, he is also extraordinary from a human point of view. A person with the right ability to listen and to interact empathically: great values, also in fashion,” added Spinelli.
Marco De Vincenzo
Elisa Bontempo/Courtesy of IED
In addition to overseeing the women’s, men’s and home collections for Etro since 2022, De Vincenzo still retains his role as head designer for leather goods at Fendi, which he first joined in 2000.
De Vincenzo launched his namesake label of womenswear in 2009, when he also won the Vogue Italia “Who Is on Next?” talent search competition and joined the Milan Fashion Week schedule. His eye for bold colors, optical effects, rich fabrics and sophisticated embellishments quickly caught the attention of press and buyers, as well as of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which struck a joint venture with the Rome-based designer in 2014.
In 2021, he bought back his namesake brand from former partners LVMH and MMGP Srl, a company that also controls Cieffe Milano, the manufacturing firm that used to produce the Marco De Vincenzo collections. In February 2022, he returned to Milan Fashion Week after a two-year hiatus to present an upcycled collection breathing new life into garments he scouted at thrift stores.
As academic mentor, De Vincenzo is joining a pool of designers that had side gigs in education in Italy, ranging from Kris Van Assche serving as mentor at Polimoda and Sunnei’s Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo at Naba school to Massimo Giorgetti and Paul Andrew at Istituto Marangoni, to name a few.