The Talents Mentoring Programme has started: ten entrant designers can get to know the creative profession’s full potential

As a reaction to market needs and professional feedback, the Hungarian Fashion & Design Agency announced the Talents Mentoring Programme for the first time in autumn 2022 with the main goal of helping fresh graduate and new entrant designers in career planning and improving their professional and entrepreneurial skills. From the numerous excellent entries, the professional jury picked 5 fashion designer and 5 product designer talents who can participate in the mentoring programme.

In the Talents Mentoring Programme – building on the HFDA’s previous training experiences – serving career planning purposes as well, deepening a professional self-awareness, broadening brand-building knowledge, and manufacturer mentoring will get a pivotal role, through which, mentees gain greater theoretical and practical insight into the areas of fashion and design and industry career opportunities. The ten entrants and fresh graduates can also learn more about sustainability and innovation and they get help in navigating business life.

The talented fashion designers who got into the programme consider sustainability and quality important. Szimonetta Lóki has loved the creative process since childhood, an essential element of her work is studying humans. In her degree work, she designed a refined women’s clothing collection, the pieces of which are based on the use of gravity. Dóra Surányi started taking an interest in fashion in primary school and she made sustainability a priority in her thesis. She used plastic waste created by 3D printers in her Nystagmus collection on the abstract photograms of her own making; the pictures’ abstract forms and patterns determine the collection’s colours. An important topic of our days, environmental and social responsibilities, are messages that appear in the work of Brigitta Szekernyés. Her designs are made based on the concepts of slow fashion; she explores how handmade, unique elements create value in an accelerated consumer society dominated by fast fashion. A discussion of social issues is typical of Nikolett Tóth’s works, too. She draws inspiration from several sources; sometimes, she returns to literature or the differences between childhood and adulthood, but the world of the 1920s and ‘30s and interior design can also be traced in her work as inspiration. Similarly to the rest of the designers, Katalin Ziegler works towards timeless and high-quality design as well; in her bag design process, leather is the determining material. Her products are characterised by simplistic colours and she considers zero-waste tailoring important.

The Talents Mentoring Programme offers development opportunities for recent graduates and new entrants working in design as well. Those who got into the programme are all product designers who have also successfully tried their hand at designing furniture or packaging, among other things. Bianka Dominika Hajdu, for instance, designed a new type of portable percussion instrument (cajon) for her degree work. She continued the project based on positive feedback and is now working on the prototypes. When designing, the creator takes great care to ensure that the products are aesthetically pleasing and fit in with the environment in which they are used. Tamás Jakab Lajos seeks to bring functionality to the forefront of his product development while he is motivated by creating a simple, subtle design. His product ideas are varied, with a common feature: putting the emphasis on the user’s specific needs. In her studies, Dorottya Peredi tried herself in product and packaging design, graphic design, and fashion design as well. The creator of the clean and minimalist Tulipán Design is a firm believer in natural material use, sustainability, and preserving our old values and heritage. Péter Ujszászi’s work is based on functional aesthetics, his main motivation is to make our world more joyful with his creations. His portfolio is very colourful, he has worked on a manual coffee-making system, an indoor composter, and a pavilion system. Sustainability, eco-consciousness, and recycling are also decisive in the work of Panna Szilágyi. The most interesting process for her during design is finding and creating forms. Her product ideas are wide-ranging, including bedroom furniture or elements designed for communal spaces.

The theoretical phase of the mentoring programme has already started, and the selected creators have taken part in the first workshops on the topics of career planning, professional self-awareness, and HR. In the following weeks, the mentees will participate in further technical programmes and thematic days focusing on sustainability and innovation. Afterwards, they can expand their competencies in an internship; then, they will present their experiences gained during the programme on a Pitch day.