At the Egyptian Museum in Turin, the HIEROGLAM project by Accademia IUAD transforms symbols, rituals and myths of the ancient Egyptian civilization into thirty contemporary creations, signed by a new generation of designers ready to tell the past with an eye to the future.
There is something that fashion and ancient Egypt have in common. Both, perhaps more than any other cultural language, are victims of the same simplification. Fashion is often dismissed as surface, appearance, aesthetics. Egypt as a repertoire of pyramids, pharaohs and immediately recognizable symbols. Yet, behind these images that belong to the collective imagination, complex worlds made of rituals, identities, narratives and profound meanings are hidden.
It is precisely from this reflection that HIEROGLAM was born, the new exhibition and training project presented by the IUAD Academy at the Egyptian Museum in Turin. An initiative that invites us to look beyond the surface and rediscover fashion as a symbolic language, capable of communicating with one of the most fascinating civilizations in history.
Curated by Pasquale Esposito and Francesco Maffei, the project involves students from the IUAD offices in Naples and Milan in the creation of a capsule collection made up of around thirty creations inspired by the aesthetics, rituals and powerful iconography of ancient Egypt. Not a simple operation of stylistic citation, but an exercise in contemporary interpretation that transforms amulets, armor, divinities and ancestral symbols into sculptural volumes, luminous surfaces and textile experiments.
The creations also dialogue with a selection of garments from the Mazzini Research Archive, including works signed by Issey Miyake, Gianfranco Ferré, Roberto Cavalli and Alexander McQueen, testifying to how the charm of Egypt has spanned decades of fashion history, continuing to inspire some of the most important international creatives.
In an era dominated by digital images, avatars and identities constructed through visual symbols, HIEROGLAM reflects on the contemporary need for belonging, meaning and rituality. Fashion thus returns to being something more than a trend: a collective story, a form of transformation, a cultural device capable of connecting past and present.
