Design PF

Simone Sommer is the new professor in the Fashion degree program

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The designer brings sustainable and innovative perspectives to the university

Simone Sommer has been the new professor on the B.A. Fashion program at Pforzheim University since winter semester 2024/2025 and brings fresh perspectives on sustainable fashion design. Her credo: fashion starts with the material.

Simone Sommer started her professional career in 2008 with a fashion diploma at Pforzheim University before completing her Master's degree in Fashion Design Womenswear in London in 2010. She then took up her first job as a fashion designer at Joop! in Bielefeld, worked in Paris at Maison Martin Margiela and at Balenciaga under Alexander Wang and finally moved to SET Fashion in Munich in 2016.

An offer from Marc O'Polo to head up the Pure line challenged Sommer to create minimalist and timeless fashion. When the line was discontinued during the Covid pandemic, the company took the opportunity to launch the new Sustainable Materials and Innovations division, of which Simone Sommer became Head. The idea: to use fibers, processes and materials to create innovations that enable more sustainable fashion.

With additional training in craftsmanship, Sommer has specialized in the field of materials and trained as a hand weaver, hand spinner and plant dyer in South Tyrol. “As a fashion designer, I work with the fabrics of others and react to them. Now I have the opportunity to do everything myself, from the fiber to the processing of the yarn to the fabric,” explains Sommer.

Sommer now brings this insight into the complete process of fashion design and the sustainable transformation of the industry to the B.A. Fashion program as a professor. She returned to the School of Design in 2022 for a teaching assignment. Since then, she has conveyed her focus on sustainable materials in fashion in seminars such as “Futures from the Past”, where she explores bast fibers with students, or the seminar “To Dye for”, in which participants can experiment with plant-based colors, for example from flowers, barks or minerals. “Material is the source in the design process; the choice of material determines how sustainably we can work in fashion,” says Sommer.

We also have Simone Sommer in particular to thank for the latest addition to our workshops: The Textile Lab. Supported by the Wilhelm Lorch Foundation, Sommer founded the lab together with Prof. Claudia Throm and equipped it with a spinning machine, a fiber extraction device, a recycling machine and a carding machine. Students can research textile processes from fiber to product here. As an interdisciplinary facility, the laboratory is explicitly open to all students of the school. Sommer would definitely have advised her own student self to use the Textile Lab 15 years ago: “You have to experience everything you can!”

Photo: Harald Koch