Repeat the Action explored repetition as a tool for transformation, connecting education and Fashion System in a live performance.
Events
Repeat the Action at ModaLisboa
Date
07 October 2025
On 30 September 2025, the Italian Embassy in Lisbon hosted a Fashion Show organized by IED and ModaLisboa to present selected looks by 12 IED Network designers: Carlotta Gadda; Haiqi Zhou; Daniele Dargenio; Simone Smeriglio; Denise Vecchi; Arianna Pejrani; Roberto Niutta; Natalia Arroyas; Miguel Conde Garcia-Mochales; Michel Mahfoud Khaouly; Eloi Sacristan; Ainhize Ganzabal Santiago. The show explores repetition as a tool for transformation, connecting education and Fashion System in a live performance.
The event hosted by IED in collaboration with Accademia di Como and Scuola Teatro Musicale at the Italian Embassy in Lisbon is part of the biennial program of GTA Grand Tour AFAM, the international project that promotes Italian culture and creativity through artistic and educational experiences in Italy and abroad. Coordinated by RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts, GTA brings together 16 partners among AFAM institutions and public bodies, and is structured in two phases: “Creating in Italy” and “Networking”. Its main goal is to foster a cultural exchange and a project-based dialogue between new generations and the professional world.*
The embassy is a fascinating and symbolic space: a threshold, an enclave, a border but also a bridge, a door, a refuge. It is at once institution and diplomacy, bureaucracy and residence, representation and protection, organization and prestige. It is a layered system in which invisible, continuous work coexists with moments of public display — where openness and closure, inside and outside, live side by side.
How can this symbolic universe be translated into a fashion show?
The artistic direction of the Lisbon leg of GTA -curated by Sha Ribeiro e Jacopo Bedussi- takes shape in the event REPEAT THE ACTION, a fashion show that explores repetition as both a technical tool and a transformative practice. The concept is inspired by a conversation between choreographer Lenio Kaklea and curator Caroline Bourgeois on the work of Bruce Nauman, particularly the idea that “freedom is a form of discipline” and that repetition is necessary in order to move forward.
Repetition here is not mere reiteration, but insistence: the constant going and returning through which qualitative change occurs. Practice — doing and redoing — creates a threshold beyond which gestures transform. What at first seems complex or unnatural, through repeated effort, becomes fluid, accessible, and charged with new meanings.
Fashion is presented as a virtuous system, one that challenges the conformity of traditional staging. The show proposes an open and permeable dialogue in which individual creative proposals coexist with hybrid forms — music, dance, performance — all converging on shared themes: the body, sociality, collectivity, exchange.
At the same time, REPEAT THE ACTION goes beyond the classical fashion show format, embracing the performative dimension as an essential part of the narrative. The body in space, sound, and rhythm become materials of exploration, blending with garments and gestures to create a multidisciplinary experience. The project also involves local talents from Lisbon, fostering new encounters and exchanges that enrich the dialogue between different cultural and artistic contexts.
This is not a collective work in the conventional sense, but rather a constellation of individual paths that together create something larger than the sum of its parts. Disciplines intersect, hierarchies dissolve, and boundaries — both material and metaphorical — fall away. In this joyful loss of limits, the unexpected transformation of the real into celebration, a sense of new visionary hope emerges.
*The “GRAND TOUR AFAM” Project (CUP I83B24000030006), is funded by the European Union – Next Generation EU (NGEU) within the framework of the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), Mission 4, Component 1, Investment 3.4 Sub-investment T5, dedicated to the internationalization of higher education in the arts and music (AFAM).
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