Lenovo and Stella McCartney have teamed up to challenge MA design students at world-renowned Central St Martins, to explore the ever-growing relationship between fashion and technology. The collaboration sees 38 lucky students who will be given a live brief over eight weeks. The students will then be tasked to construct a sustainable solution that pushes the boundaries of where fashion and technology intersect.
The initial idea for a collaboration to take shape was the brainchild, of up-and-coming strategy and communications agency Neverland.
“When you put the combined ambition of these brands into the hands of our future creative thinkers, with the right technology, amazing things will happen.” said Neverland co-founder Jon Forsyth.
At the end of the two-month initiative, Stella McCartney aims to offer a three-month internship to one winning student who was deemed the most impressive. There the student will have the ability to rotate between multiple departments before settling on their choice.
As part of the collaboration, Lenovo will be providing one of their new next-generation, ultra-slim Windows 11 Yoga laptops to each student taking part.
Course Director, Simon Fraser stated that sustainability and ethicality of production is an urgent challenge within each of their disciplines, and that they were delighted to have the opportunity to test the principles and practices of MA Design with former alumni Stella McCartney and the Lenovo team.
McCartney said that her vision for the students is to develop something “entirely new” in the realm of sustainable fashion. Ms McCartney would love to reinvent the wheel and find something that could both reduce the impact of the original process as well as replace the traditional way of working within the fashion industry.
“Only in the last few years have we seen the innovation ramp up, which shows me how timely this student project is,” said the designer.
The partnership also sees Lenovo’s vision to become net-zero by 2050, the company have expressed that 100% of their PCs will contain post-consumer recycled materials, as well as 90% of their packaging.
The collaboration comes at a pinocle time in history where the concept of change is in everybody’s trajectory. It is exciting that we live in a time where powerhouse fashion companies can collaborate with tech giants, such as Lenovo to elicit change and make the world more sustainable.
Words By Seraphina Volpi
Photo Credit: Stella McCartney Instagram
