FTalliance, a three-year Knowledge Alliance Project co-founded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union aimed to facilitate the exchange and flow of knowledge within the Fashion-Tech sector to boost students’ employability and innovation potential. The established alliance comprises partners from 6 Programme Countries: 12 full partners among which are higher education institutions (Politecnico di Milano, ESTIA École Supérieure Des Technologies Industrielles Avancées, Högskolan i Borås, University of the Arts London - London College of Fashion, Technische Universiteit Delft), research organisations (Centexbel) and small, medium and big enterprises (Decathlon International, Pangaia Grado Zero S.r.l., Pauline van Dongen, Pespow S.p.a., Stentle (M-Cube Group), We Love You. Along with the full partners, the Consortium will be supported by PVH Europe as associate partner.

The purpose of the Project is to ensure the ongoing innovation in the European Fashion-Tech sector by providing emerging talents with relevant competencies and know-how to enter the jobs market. Fashion-Tech means new products, processes, tools and professional figures that come about as a result of cross-disciplinary approaches. To keep up with this emerging field, there is an increasing urgency for organisations to adapt and advance collaborative practices, to find ways to integrate new technologies into fashion and design.

FTalliance takes the challenge, joining different realities into a multidisciplinary and intersectoral Project that combines companies’ technological, creative and market leadership with universities through theoretical and applied researches and experiences. The Consortium will deliver a series of educational activities, from designing and piloting innovative mentoring formats for students to the development of a FashionTech Residency, embedding young talents in the companies’ innovation activities. The selected students will have the chance to develop concrete projects and products accessing coaching opportunities, innovation spaces, facilities and equipment provided by host companies.

In the long-term, the Project aims at increasing the relevance, quality and impactfulness of Fashion-tech innovations and also at enhancing the competitivity of the European Fashion system at a global level revamping the industry through innovative practices. As coordinator, Politecnico di Milano ensures project and quality management processes, along with internal quality monitoring measures. Besides, Politecnico di Milano is in charge to co-create the educational experiences to match the competence level expected by the field-oriented approach in Fashion-Tech along with pilot and evaluate three learning pilots intended as challenge based workshops in which students, teachers and companies are involved. In addition, the exploitation and sustainability phase will be co-designed by Politecnico di Milano and partners to envision scenarios dedicated to an educational fashion-tech model that could be exploited ater the end of the FTalliance project, defining guidelines and informing a framework for sharing didactic activities to be replicated amongst Higher Educational Institutions and Companies.