Fashion doesn’t begin when a garment is finished. Before it becomes a finished piece, there is a process of research, experimentation, and decision-making that combines cultural references, personal concerns, and a particular way of interpreting the world. This is the concept behind ‘Walking the Design,’ the exhibition organized by the Higher School of Design of the Balearic Islands (Esdib), which invites visitors to discover the creative journey of second and third-year students specializing in Fashion.
The exhibition, which opens this Thursday morning, will be open to the public until November 8 in the School’s exhibition hall. In addition to presenting a selection of designs, the initiative focuses on what is normally excluded from the final result: the processes, the trials, the lessons learned, and the reflections that accompany the development of a collection. It offers a perspective on design as a practice open to the exchange of knowledge and dialogue with different social realities.
As part of a collaborative contemporary fashion project, “Walking the Design” brings together creativity, social awareness, and the local landscape. The initiative stems from a desire to expose students to diverse cultural contexts and to foster a critical perspective on global relationships, translating these reflections into the language of design.
The exhibition is a continuation of the fashion show and exhibition previously held at the Inca Footwear Museum. In this new phase, Esdib broadens the perspective and offers a look at the work behind the designs: from the initial research to experimentation with materials and the application of hand techniques.
The project has led students to explore new ways of understanding creativity through workshops, awareness-raising activities, and knowledge exchange. Experimentation with African fabrics is one of the key elements of this journey, incorporating textile and cultural references into a research process that seeks to expand the conventional codes of fashion design.
The students have developed their proposals using a methodology that combines theoretical research, material exploration, and craftsmanship. Each piece, therefore, reflects a series of creative decisions influenced by both the technical resources available and the issues that arise during the process. The result is a collection of designs and documentation that allows us to trace this evolution and understand how shared experiences influence the perspective of people preparing for a professional career in the fashion industry.
This process-oriented aspect is one of the exhibition’s strengths. In contrast to a view of fashion that focuses exclusively on the finished piece, ‘Walking the Design’ highlights the learning that takes place along the way: the ability to experiment, to refine ideas, to incorporate other perspectives, and to turn a concept into a tangible proposal.
The initiative also highlights the role of design education as a space for linking professional practice with social and cultural issues. Creative practice becomes a means to explore the relationships between territories, recognize the diversity of reference points, and question the global dynamics that shape the production and interpretation of objects.
With this exhibition, Esdib offers a vision of contemporary design in which the value of the pieces coexists with that of the experiences that made them possible. It is an opportunity to discover how future fashion professionals develop their creative language through research, exchange, and experimentation, and how this process can open up new ways of interacting with the world around us.
“Walking the Design” will be on display until November 8 in the exhibition hall of the School of Design of the Balearic Islands.