The 17th edition of Feeric Fashion Week drew to a close last week in the historic Romanian city of Sibiu, once again affirming its status as Eastern Europe’s most progressive and unconventional fashion event. What began as a fashion presentation has evolved into a far-reaching creative and cultural movement—one that touches on identity, sustainability, community memory, and the shifting aesthetics of contemporary design. In 2025, Feeric did more than deliver visual spectacles; it sparked meaningful conversations that questioned the very fabric of what fashion means today.
This year’s edition embraced the theme of sustainability, responsibility, collective memory, and visual research. Through these lenses, designers and artists explored not only what fashion looks like, but how it functions as a tool of social critique, emotional healing, environmental advocacy, and cultural preservation. The resulting exhibitions, runway shows, workshops, and installations formed a rich tapestry of perspectives that challenged traditional fashion narratives and opened up new pathways for interdisciplinary collaboration.
The event began with two days of educational programming, including workshops and panel discussions led by influential voices from across the global fashion and media industries. Notable speakers included Sara Sozzani Maino, Giovanni Ottonello, Arielle Levy Verry, Ioana Ciolacu, and Oana Lazăr, who engaged directly with students and young professionals. These sessions focused on sustainable design practices, fashion entrepreneurship, and emerging creative economies, reflecting a growing recognition that future designers must be more than artists—they must be innovators, activists, and cultural stewards.
Among the week’s early highlights was a prestigious design competition hosted by the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED), where Michał Duraj, Andrada Negru, and Blanka Gotić earned full scholarships to further their education. Their work, along with collections by students and alumni from universities in over 20 countries, underscored the festival’s academic and international scope. Institutions such as Newgiza University in Egypt, the Ukrainian Fashion Education Group, National University of Arts Bucharest, Kaunas University of Applied Sciences, and Viamoda Poland presented collections that ranged from experimental silhouettes to wearable philosophies.
One of Feeric’s most distinctive qualities is its commitment to redefining the runway itself. True to its ethos, the event transformed a wide array of urban and industrial spaces into immersive fashion stages. This year’s unconventional venues included underground parking lots, salt depots, fortified churches, textile factories, and even the municipal stadium. The creative reuse of public and forgotten places lent the shows a cinematic quality and emphasized the importance of context, environment, and spatial storytelling in the presentation of fashion.
The festival’s opening presentation, titled “Timeless Threads” by the brand Hooldra, served as a bold visual manifesto on circular design and conscious consumption. Set against a backdrop of recycling trucks and 3,000 kilograms of textile waste collected locally in just six weeks, the show reimagined discarded clothing as poetic, wearable forms. Inspired by 1960s aesthetics, the garments were constructed from secondhand textiles and crafted in collaboration with emerging European designers. The performance highlighted the urgent need to rethink fashion’s reliance on overproduction and challenged the audience to reflect on the lifecycle of garments before they become waste. “Recycling isn’t enough,” the collection declared. “Change begins with consumption choices.”
Feeric Fashion Week president and Feeric Hub founder Mitichi Preda echoed this sentiment in a powerful statement: “True transformation starts not after we discard, but before. Sustainable fashion is not just about what we do with old clothes—it’s about consuming more consciously, with intention and respect for resources. We must reduce, not only reinvent.”
The opening show was immediately followed by the hauntingly poetic “OP:1” by Dutch designer Wijnruit, staged in a city-owned salt storage facility typically used for snow removal. Blending military canvas, lace, wool, and printed lycra, Wijnruit’s modular garments evoked themes of inherited memory and identity. Removable sleeves and adjustable components allowed the clothes to morph and shift, reflecting the fluidity of personal histories and evolving cultural values.
The program continued with a series of collective presentations from international academic institutions, held in Promenada Sibiu’s subterranean parking structure, which had been transformed into a raw, contemporary art gallery. A standout installation came from Ana Farima, whose exhibit “Bodaprosti”—inspired by her grandmother’s memories, prayers, and oral traditions—merged ancestral craft with modern sustainability. Using a new kind of vegan leather derived from plant waste, each piece became an artifact of cultural transmission. The exhibition also included a short observational film blending personal archives with contemporary footage, expanding the garments into an immersive, multi-sensory narrative.
Feeric’s dialogue between art and fashion continued through shows like “Appearance of Transition | Transition of Appearance” by INSIDE Upcycling Couture, a Polish collective that explored the metamorphosis of found materials into powerful fashion statements. Their collection wove discarded items into symbolic garments that spoke to transformation and resilience, while WE – Wilczewska Emilia’s “DOM” used household textiles such as pillows and quilts to build exaggerated silhouettes that reimagined domesticity as protection and personal sanctuary.
One of the festival’s most moving sequences unfolded at the Fortified Evangelical Church of Cisnădie, where the Technical University of Moldova presented a collection inspired by solitude, femininity, and Romanian folklore, including a contemporary reinterpretation of Mihai Eminescu’s poem Luceafărul. The spiritual ambiance of the setting amplified the themes of introspection and myth. This was followed by “Obedience in Fragments” by Blanka Gotić, which deconstructed religious symbolism using poplin, sheer fabrics, and coarse twine to interrogate the tension between belief and female agency.
Throughout the week, transformation remained a dominant thread—whether in material, meaning, or method. Galala University’s “Transformation” collection drew from fairy tales and raw emotion, while the collaboration between Donja Gorica University and Arizona State University produced “Unknown Nature,” a denim-based exploration of wild, abstract forms. The National Academy of Art in Sofia’s “Symbiosis” offered zero-waste garments inspired by biodiversity, presenting fashion as a living system where ethics and aesthetics coexist.
Back at Baia Populară—a restored 1904 health complex blending Art Nouveau architecture with modern wellness facilities—designer Viktor Spasov staged “NOCTERA” for the brand VERÈDIA. His all-black collection combined flowing organza with structured velvet to redefine power dressing through elegance and restraint. Designer Alina Lazariu’s brand Dualitae followed with “The Quiet Icon,” a tribute to the timeless white shirt, emphasizing subtlety as a radical act of style.
As the week unfolded, fashion continued to intertwine with cultural commentary. The “HAIDE” project, curated by Karla Ciambur under the Feeric Hub umbrella, showcased how Romanian folklore can enter modern conversations without being diluted. Artists, craftspeople, researchers, and designers collaborated to celebrate heritage through performance, clothing, and interactive storytelling at Cinegold—a symbolic “horă” (traditional circle dance) of generations joined by art.
At the Boromir Mill basement, Natalie Soto’s “Paper Dolls” delivered a personal reflection on healing through reinvention. Combining romantic silhouettes with reconstructed military elements, the collection transformed fabrics like lace, jersey, and suit scraps into brave and nostalgic garments adorned with bows, pearls, and handwoven details. It spoke to fashion’s ability to mend broken parts of our past and present them anew.
In the municipal stadium, students from the West University of Timișoara and the National University of Arts “George Enescu” in Iași engaged directly with themes of digital alienation, trauma, rebirth, and hybrid identity. These young designers showcased an unflinching honesty, using industrial materials and experimental volumes to express both social critique and vulnerability. Their collections felt like manifestos, stitched with urgency and imagination.
The grand finale, Gala Feeric, took place in the atmospheric Huet Square, where the city’s Gothic architecture provided a majestic backdrop to over a dozen visionary collections. Among them was “Cuoricini” by Kauno Kolegija HEI, a knitwear collection balancing fragility and strength, and “UNAPOLOGETIC” by Daiana-Mihaela Stăncioiu, a UAD Cluj-Napoca project merging photography with wearable sculpture. The International Design Academy explored timeless monochrome elegance, while Viamoda Poland’s cohort delved into gender identity through historic femininity, androgyny, and functional sustainable designs.
Kaylee Johnson’s “Grief,” inspired by brutalist architecture, and Akvilė Bernotaitė’s folkloric “Does She Speak Samogitian?” reinforced the idea that design can offer alternative languages to express emotion, loss, and resilience. From corseted rebellion to draped serenity, the Gala was not merely a celebration, but a statement of intent—a declaration that fashion must remain responsive, inclusive, and ever-evolving.
In closing, Feeric Fashion Week 2025 stood as a living testament to fashion’s expansive potential. It broke free from market conventions, focusing instead on experimentation, education, and cultural discourse. By fusing fashion with urban memory, ecological urgency, and human experience, Feeric continues to position itself not just as an event, but as a movement. It’s where textiles become texts, where garments become gestures, and where designers don’t just dress bodies—they provoke, reveal, and transform.
With each passing year, Sibiu grows deeper into this role—not only as a host city but as an incubator for global dialogue and a canvas for next-generation ideas. Feeric Fashion Week doesn’t simply follow trends. It generates meaning. And in 2025, its message was clear: the future of fashion isn’t only about how we dress—it’s about how we live, remember, connect, and care.