Supporting our designers
Within the Native project, the participating designers had creative mentors to support them in their approach to the fashion industry.
All these mentors are experts of their own, within the fashion industry. They helped the designers to focus on product and innovative collection development, making the most out of the partnerships with the fashion industry.
Here you can read about some of the mentors…
Małgorzata Czudak
Małgorzata is a clothing designer, passionate about fashion and design. She skilfully combines theoretical knowledge with practical experience, acquired during extensive cooperation with clothing companies. She shares his experience with students of the Studio of Clothing 240 of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź.
Minimalist by choice
For several years, she has been creating her own collections, branded MCZUDAK. She is a minimalist by choice, reducing unnecessary elements. Functionality and practical details are very important to her. She values traditional crafts and manual work. Her clothes are designed with pleasure to please the people wearing them. She has written articles on trends and market relations. She does shows as well as teaching in lectures and at workshops.
Anna Appelqvist
Up till 2020 Anna Appelqvist was the Brand and New Business Director at Swedish Gina Tricot. Before that she was the Buying & Design Director. With her more than 20 years as a leader at Gina Tricot, Anna has a strong, honest and profound believe in people. She was responsible for building strong teams and individuals, thus creating remarkable results even in challenging situations, including extreme growth. She’s done this by delegating, involving and motivating.
Building with pride
– What I am most proud of in all my years at Gina Tricot, while experiencing all the different stages of building a company with extreme growth, developing in challenging times and remaking with new strategies, is the journey from zero to more than two billion SEK.
Contact: Anna at LinkedIn
Roberto Corbelli
Roberto is an Art director and curator. He is the president of Moda in Italy in Bologna, an organisation to support the internationalisation of Italian fashion companies. He is also president of CAN Federmoda in Rimini. He is a well-renowned person within the Italian fashion industry and as that much asked for as speaker at events, exhibitions, workshops, festivals and more.
Moda in Italy
Roberto Corbelli is the creator of RMI (Ricerca Moda Innovazione), Italy in 1990, an annual event of CNA Federmoda. This event has seen the participation of many well-known international designers and businesses over the years, among them: Alberta Ferretti, Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, Elio Fiorucci, La Perla, Max Mara, just to mention a few.
He has also curated several exhibition and fashion event around the world. And holds a black belt in karate.
Contact: info@robertocorbelli.eu
Adrianna Grudzińska–Pham
Adrianna was awarded a Master’s degree (cum laude) in Fashion Design and Painting at the W. Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź in 2010. Currently, she is an assistant at the Fashion Design Studio, Fashion Design Institute, W. Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź.
Design classes
She also holds Fashion Design classes and Specialist Drawing classes at Extramural Studies. In the years 2012-2018 she was the lecturer and the Head of Moda-Stylizacja-Trendy (Fashion-Styling-Trends) Postgraduate Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. She is actively involved in the Academy’s artistic and organisational life, being part om many different events and exhibitions.
Montserrat Figueras
Montserrat currently runs her own law firm and does consultancy for textile companies. Her experience in textile manufacturing and her passion for fashion is a solid foundation for being one of the Native project mentors. One of her aims is to share her experience, so that future designers may succeed.
Managing businesses
Montserrat Figueras has a background as business lawyer and has the last more than ten years worked as a business executive. Her bachelor’s in law is from UIC of Barcelona and she has an exam from the executive business programme at the IESE Business School.
She was earlier the CEO of Polyamide Yarn Factory, managing director of Dogi International Fabrics and General manager of the Spanish women fashion brand System Action.
Contact: Montserrat at LinkedIn
Alicia González López
After graduating in Fashion Design studies and Computer Science Engineering, Alicia started developing and working on her knitting skills. She spent long time finding and recovering old domestic knitting machines in which she has trained herself in a self-taught way. For the last few years, she has been holding classes in pattern making, digital technologies and fashion design at LCI Barcelona, the school where she was graduated.
Made to last
Currently she combines her work as a teacher with her own brand Odd one out, while at the same time working as a freelance for the fashion industry. With her own brand she captures the devotion to knitwear and the essence of her life and fashion’s concept, characterised by quality and austerity. Made to last is her leitmotiv. All the pieces in her collections are designed and knitted by herself, using premium natural fibres.
Contact: Alicia at LinkedIn
