a fashion school takes the podium and weaves hope

Behind a thin white plastic tarpaulin, sounds that are difficult to understand but undeniably joyful burst forth and spread noisily throughout the immense space of Virage Paris. This inclusive party place located under the ring road between the 17th arrondissement and the town of Saint-Ouen then hosts, on the occasion of fashion week, the parade of the sixth promotion of Casa 93. Its cheerful voices, this are those of the students who, after briefly greeting an audience won over by the show, joined the backstage.

And when the twenty creators – forced by the applause – reappear in the aisles, the moment of glory is not lost. Everyone shouts in unison the name of Nadine Gonzalez – the founder of the school – and awards her all the “well done” that the spectators address to them.

This attention from the students is all the more touching as Casa 93 – sometimes pronounced “house nine-three” –, is not really a school like any other. Open since 2017 without qualification requirements to people aged 18 to 25, Casa 93 is a completely free school. Located in Montreuil, its objective is to make the fashion world more accessible to young talents who are not able, for financial reasons or prior experience, to join another establishment.

From shock to serenity

Baptized 66°33″ in reference to the Arctic Circle which corresponds to the northern latitude beyond which there are, each year, at least twenty-four hours without night and twenty-four hours without day, the collection of the sixth promotion of Casa 93 is intended to bring hope. “We explore the different stages of life, of feelings, a cycle which goes from shock to serenity. The polar circle is a symbol of metamorphoses”, explains Pacôme, a 25-year-old student. “Just because it’s dark for a long time doesn’t mean it won’t get better,” adds, on the fly, another student.

And from black outfits to immaculate ensembles, the collection that Casa 93 presented on Tuesday September 26 is indeed a life-saving cycle. As the show opened with dark outfits made of stiff fabrics and tears, models gradually brought more color and flexibility into the raw aisles of Virage Paris. Blue, purple, pink, brown, yellow then a bright red which combines with black and mixes with white before giving it full space.

Offering a wide range of colors, the young designers also provide, through a wide variety of materials, a real technical demonstration. Leather, cotton, cardboard, microfibers and even plastic: the students tackle everything and do not hesitate to alter the raw nature of the fabrics, notably resorting to an ingenious and unacademic use of heat guns.

Another fashion

For this parade, all of the creations were made thanks to donations of fabrics and clothing made throughout the year by various brands and companies. “It is thanks to our patrons, our partners and our donors that Casa 93 can afford to be free,” recalls Nadine Gonzalez, founder of the school, at the end of the show. Among them: Louis Vuitton, Courir, Adidas, La Redoute and Mugler. Some brands also send students clothing and accessories that they can then rework as they wish. For this fashion show, the Christian Louboutin house sent around fifty pairs of shoes to the school. From pumps to moccasins, all pairs have been adapted to the theme of the collection.

Essential to the life of the training, these partnerships also give a resolutely ecological orientation to Casa 93. In fact, the creations do not require any additional textile production. “There are very often deliveries of materials. Sometimes, we also bring old clothes from our loved ones, everything is made from a material that already exists,” explains Pacôme. “The goal is really to create far from the practices of big brands or fastfashion” adds Fatima, also a student at Casa 93. Furthermore, organized in a neutral setting and using a few construction tarpaulins for decoration, the show was co-financed by the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe).

In this counter to traditional fashion, another desire of the students appears: that of greater inclusiveness and a rejection of norms, particularly those of gender. Skirts and pants but also revealed bodies – or not – for everyone, without distinction. And during the fashion show, the clothes are presented to the public by non-professional models who were chosen by the students. A casting call on the networks was launched for the occasion. “We wanted people who look like us, who have our diversity. We also wanted there to be older people,” explains a student.

Work collectively

The collection that the students presented on September 26 at Fashion Week is the result of a year of individual learning and collective creation. “Each of us is a link in a chain, and it is this chain that constitutes our collection”, analyzes Pacôme, during a visit to the school’s workshops a few days before the parade. Even if each student is the originator of this or that piece that constitutes part of one of the fifty looks in the collection, it is always the group that takes precedence.

During the selection of students from among the 600 applicants for the class of 2023, a collective capable of self-learning and mutual assistance was indeed formed. “Some are very creative, have a world of their own but have almost no knowledge of sewing while others are already very comfortable with the practice,” adds the student. “We all learn different things and we learn from each other,” Anita then explains. “I already knew how to sew, I worked more on my creativity and it was a real human adventure.”

If the collection has already been presented, the follow-up does not stop there for the twenty young people who, for some, only have one year of work in the fashion world under their belt. After the year of training at Casa 93 which provides six months of technical discovery and six months of preparation of the collection, the students are preparing to follow three months of support for professional integration which will be followed by two to six month of internship in a company.

At the end of the adventure, on average 35% of them will join a new training course while the majority of the promotion will be self-employed. Fatima would like to continue training and move towards artistic direction while Pacôme would like to start as a stylist. “Not all members of the class necessarily know what they want to do, explains the latter, but if there is one thing that is certain, it is that we have all discovered ourselves enormously.”