YNAP supports young designers and artisans with The Prince’s Foundation

By

Edoardo Meliado

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Nov 14, 2019

The YNAP group is supporting young designers and artisans in collaboration with The Prince’s Foundation through 'The Modern Artisan’ project. The fashion and luxury e-tailer’s boss, Federico Marchetti, and HRH the Prince of Wales, president of The Prince’s Foundation, have joined forces with the goal of endowing young creatives with the resources to produce luxury ready-to-wear collections in today’s highly digitalised environment.

The project will support fashion students in the design, sustainable production and market launch of a luxury ready-to-wear capsule collection for men and women for the fall/winter season.
 
The collection will be ready by mid-2020, when YNAP will celebrate its 20th anniversary, and will be available for sale, for the first time in YNAP’s history, on all its four websites: Yoox, Net-A-Porter, Mr Porter and The Outnet. The proceeds from the collection’s sales will be donated to The Prince's Foundation to support its charitable work.

The collection will be designed by six Italian students selected by Milan’s Politecnico University, drawing inspiration from the works of Leonardo Da Vinci - the 500th anniversary of his death is being celebrated this year - and from the Italian and British heritage of textile craftsmanship. In parallel, six UK graduates will take part in a four-month training course on short production runs for luxury goods, through which they will be able to develop their skills in working with wool, cashmere and silk in order to create finished products consistent with the luxury industry’s requirements.

The student-designed collection will then be produced at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, Scotland, where The Prince’s Foundation is based. After the launch, the work from 'The Modern Artisan' project will be showcased at the ‘Homo Faber’ exhibition dedicated to European craftsmanship, organised by the Michelangelo Foundation at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice in 2020.