Milan Fashion Week is not exclusively reserved for the large houses or established brands, thanks to the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI). During Milan Fashion Week Women’s Collection Spring/Summer 2022, from Sept. 21-27, 2021, CNMI celebrates and promotes young design talents from around the world at the Fashion Hub. A venue dedicated solely to the most interesting international designers, the Fashion Hub provides high visibility to emerging talents who embody CNMI’s values, like sustainability, inclusivity, and diversity.  

An exciting night for new talents, the Fashion Hub’s opening on Sept. 21 brought individuals together to celebrate the recipients of a few coveted design awards—the DHL Young Designer Award and the Camera Buyer Italia prize for Fashion Hub young designers—presented by Italian actress Fiammetta Cicogna. 

The DHL Young Designer Award was given to Gilberto Calzolari, whose collection is on display at the Fashion Hub, and Des Phemmes and Marco Rambaldi, brands included in the official CNMI calendar. DHL promises to support winning designers’ international expansion processes. Young designers working on the “Fashion Bridges – I Ponti della Moda” project, Michael Peter Reid and Domenico Orefice—with a special mention to Alessia Dovero e Sipho Mbuto—won the Camera Buyer Italia prize.     

The winners’ project, “Fashion Bridges – I Ponti della Moda,” is an impressive, collaborative affair bringing talent together on an international, multicultural scale. CNMI worked with a variety of partners to make the collaboration possible—the Italian Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, the Italian fashion school Polimoda, the South African Fashion Week, the ICE Agenzia (Italian Foreign Trade Agency), the Centro di Firenze per la Moda Italiana, and the Nelson Mandela Forum Firenze. The initiative paired four former Polimoda students with four emerging designers from the South African Fashion Week. The Milan presentation is the beginning of an ongoing collaboration which continues at the South African Fashion Week in Johannesburg at the end of October.    

Other exciting initiatives exhibited at the Fashion Hub include: the CNMI’s collaboration with the Hungarian Fashion and Design Agency on “Budapest Select;” the CNMI sustainability program’s “Designers for the Planet” promoting three emerging, eco-conscious brands (Tiziano Guardini, Gilberto Calzolari and Re-generations); a joint-effort Instagram competition and project by DHL and the Camera60Studio to promote Italian craft businesses’ commitment to sustainability; a collaborative endeavor between CNMI and the Black Lives Matter in Italian Fashion Collective entitled “Black Lives Matter in Italian Fashion,” featuring five new BIPOC designers. 

A true collaborative venture, the Fashion Hub celebrates the best and brightest new talents within Milan and far beyond.