Costanza Menchi aka #laprofe is a university professor of fashion, art, and communication. Consultant to important fashion houses, artisan shops, and small independent workshops. Her work revolves around studying, researching, enhancing the value of cultural heritage by developing storytelling, which she considers as being the identity and the specific reference value of every creative organization. She deals with the development of cultural events; she designs, coordinates and carries through educational paths at a university level, both in Italy and abroad.
Florentine by birth, she studied History of Art and specialized in Decorative and Industrial Arts at the University of Florence. Her first published research thesis covered the costume designs and stage productions of the Academy Award winner Oscar Gabriella Pescucci, for the Theatre of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Subsequently, she became assistant professor of History of Fashion at the University of Florence.
At the same time, she carries out research for the Museum of Straw and Straw Weaving of Florence’s straw hat district, as well as teaching on Italian fashion and culture at Florentine-based US universities and international training institutes. For years now, she has been collaborating with Italian and foreign, private and public institutions to support and organize events, to engage in intercultural exchange and to promote the genius loci of local communities. For a time, she moved to Massachusetts and taught at Smith College. She obtained a master’s in Culture and Communication at Middlebury College, which led to research into the relationship between Fashion and Cinema for the success of Made in Italy.
After the years of research and collaboration with various research institutes of North America, such as FIDM of Los Angeles, she returned to Italy and to Florence where she continued her university work at the University of the United States and international Higher Education Institutes. In thatperiod, research and collaboration with the territory’s small and medium enterprises, bent on enhancing the work of artisans and craft-based art, intensified.
She became coordinator and director of academic programs related to fashion, styling and communication and she now focuses on creating educational paths aiming at attracting young people to the world of fashion and art by approaching it experimentally, coming into direct contact with the materials, creative processes, production, districts and human values of people who create with their hands, expressing and revealing their talent and passion.
Throughout these years, she has collaborated with newspapers and magazines in Italian and English, and has published articles and editorials on the subjects of fashion archives, the luxury market, art and fashion events. Her interest in communication has grown, thanks to her collaboration with the radio and special programs on craftsmanship and Made in Italy. Because of these pursuits and endeavors and as an act of love towards Florence, Tuscany and authentic works of craftsmanship, she embarked on her first independent video script writing for the Rinasciamo 4.0 production. These are a series of short video clips and interviews made during the restarting stage following the lockdown, that showcase the commitment and the desire to move forward of creators and makers, artisans and young designers present in the territory. A proactive, symbolic gesture to demonstrate that–though confrontedwith complex challenges–by collaborating in the name of ideas, creativity and experimentation, we can look forward to a better future with a fresh set of eyes, thanks to the union of tradition with technology, respect for the environment and the values of sustainability.
She is a frequent guest speaker at international conferences, workshops and Masterclasses, and continues to do research, listening and sharing: this path promotes growth just as relationships nurture a new vision for the future.
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