In Paris, in the corridors of the National School of Decorative Arts - "Arts Déco" for insiders - breathes an air of the Mediterranean. The world is on hiatus, France confined, but the journey does not stop at borders in a world, where the virtual is freed from distances. For this third edition, the Itinérance project led by Alexia Tronel and Caroline Perdrix continues its journey around responsible and committed initiatives in Mediterranean fashion. The project is a collaboration with textile design students from ENSAD and the Mucem museum in Marseille.

The faces of ENSAD students and their teachers are displayed on the screen, along with a videoconference around the table to discuss the challenges of this new edition of Itinérance.

The Mucem has opened its archives to young creators, who will have to design textile pieces around the museum's ex-voto collection.These objects are offered to the deities to give them thanks or to send them our prayers. It is to the concept of the ex-voto rather than to the form that the pieces should respond: to make a wish or to thank. Each student draws on it for reflection and endeavors to produce a garment, a sample of material, a fabric, thus perpetuating ancestral know-how in textile craftsmanship.

As always, Itinérance tends to encourage the transmission of know-how and gives pride of place to craftsmanship in an industry that is not immune to the challenges of our time such ecological issues, but also societal issues, which can be found in the reflections of ENSAD students facing the imperative of industrialization, the place of craftsmanship and "research through doing"; and as a result takes on its full meaning..

One student shows a desire to fill the lack of representation of these skills. Another student wishes to pay tribute to them through her work. In order to make these unique pieces, young designers go through the learning of the techniques provided by their textile design course: knitting, weaving, dyeing, finishing, screen printing or even crochet. Their teacher speaks of "emotional design", in which hands, head and heart come together to create an emotional connection with the garment. Emancipated from its religious dimension, the ex-voto becomes a source of inspiration both in its serial aspect and in the vow or thanks that it embodies. Apprentice designers do not make a simple garment, they think about and experience a textile piece in all its allegorical dimension. We don't make fashion, we create material.

This third section of Itinérance is marked by the diversity of the creative responses that different profiles of the students have generated.

Some see it as an opportunity to send a political message, particularly through feminism, while others see it as a celebration of parenthood or the body. All seem to agree on the ecological question of wondering about the end of life of textile productions. In a polluting industry where fast fashion reigns supreme, how do you create durable materials that can be assembled in a textile piece designed to last?

In Paris, in the corridors of ENSAD, wishes and thanks took shape. From this project, completed in May 2021, was born a rich collection of interpretations by the designers of tomorrow, about ten per student. It will be visible on social networks at first before being exhibited in a museum institution in Marseille. A return to the cradle of the ex-votos that inspired it, like so many granted wishes.