Simone Sommer
Pforzheim University | Academic Lecturer Material Innovations & Future Technologies
About Speaker
Simone is professor for fashion, design and sustainable transformation at the school of design at Pforzheim University in the South of Germany.
A fashion womenswear graduate from the Royal College of Art in London, Simone pursued a career working for fashion brands in various segments of the industry like Margiela, Balenciaga, Joop! and Marc O’Polo, where natural materials and their use in long-lasting, timeless designs has always been the backbone of her design style.
A growing critical attitude towards the commercial acceleration in the fashion industry and a formation as handweaver in Northern Italy led her to search for more sustainable practices in fashion quite in general.
Since then, the question where the materials used for making clothes come from and how a transformed approach to sourcing, making and designing can unleash new creativity drives her career and opened new opportunities: Next to the professorship Simone is a member of the grassroots movements Fibershed and a contributor at Berlin based change agency circular.fashion. Simone has successfully conducted piloting industry projects of using European flax and local wool from South Germany for Marc O’Polo and continues to collaborate with industry partners in her region to promote wool from open pasture grazing as a key player in protecting biodiversity and ecological stability.
The vision of using natural, safe and long-lasting materials within a resilient, fair, regional and transparent textile ecosystem has become the driving force in her multiple activities as designer, maker, lecturer and transformation multiplier within different contexts and networks.
As a professor, the terms “connectivity” and “holisticity” are on top of her agenda, whether it concerns farming and fashion, ecology and economy or designing and making.
Her most recent project united the BA students from fashion, accessory, automotive and industrial design to work interdisciplinary on the research for new design approaches for wool, using small scale fab lab technologies like CNC milling, machine needle felting and laser cut.
The results will be exhibited during the conference.