JURY
Agnieszka Jacobson- Cielecka
Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka, PhD, curator of many exhibitions promoting Polish and European design, researcher and writer. The programme director of the School of Form and the dean of the Faculty of Design at SWPS University in Warsaw. Earlier artistic director of Lódź Design Festival and the launching chief editor of the Polish edition of Elle Decoration (2000-7).
Exhibitions presented in Lithuania: Materia Prima (Klajpeda and Kaunas), Unpolished and Roundabout Baltic (both in Vilnius).
Alessandro Maria Ferreri
Behind the scenes of high fashion’s glamorous landscape are the all-important, yet often unseen decision makers. Highly trained and skilled, analytical management teams are charged with translating creative vision into retail success.
In order to succeed, this faction of elite executives must possess an array of professional and personal qualities to drive their brand through to the four corners of the globe. They are cultured, well-travelled individuals, exceptional negotiators who are naturally good with languages.
Alessandro Maria Ferreri, with over 20 years of experience in the luxury industry, definitely belongs to this group of management savants who balance style with sales. Hailing from the northern Italian city of Turin, this engineering graduate has a range of diverse experiences under his belt from working with UN peacekeepers in New York to management roles with the industry’s most prestigious brands.
AMF worked for many years for worldwide fashion conglomerate Aeffe Group as General Manager Asia; has then covered a four years role as Retail and Sales Director at Jean Paul Gaultier (when the brand was owned and managed by Hermès) before returning to his native Italy, in 2008, to join the prestigious house of Etro, as Chief Commercial Officer.
After overseeing, for five years, hundreds of the brand’s worldwide boutiques and international offices, AMF has been chosen by Renzo Rosso as Global Director of Commercial and Merchandising for Staff International (OTB Luxury Division), in charge of the distribution and product strategy of the holding portfolio which includes Marni, Maison Margiela, Dsquared2, Vivienne Westwood and Marc Jacobs, just to name a few.
A citizen of the world, AMF travels constantly, attending fashion shows and meetings. And it is this cultural capital and long experience in fashion that finally bring Alessandro to found his own advisory company.
Sitting at the helm of THE STYLE GATE, AMF focuses on the global development of different brands and international retailers, offering a wide range of management services to startups as well as to established names. When it comes to matters of merchandising, commercial strategy, retail and digital, marketing and competition assessment, AMF is at the top of the people who know how to value a luxury product and get results out of it.
When Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana founded in 2019 the Fashion Trust, chose AMF as an official member and ambassador to select, sustain and mentor talented young emerging designers.
AMF is currently also Permanent Lecturer, Field Coach and Project Mentor at The London Royal College of Arts and at Università Cattolica di Milano.
In June 2020 AMF is honored with the cover of Forbes Magazine Italia edition. In September 2020 the same cover has been chosen by Forbes America to represent the best one out of the 12 Forbes Italia issues of the year. In October 2020 AMF is elected among the 100 most influential italian CEOs of 2020.
On the light of the above career and current tasks, Alessandro Maria Ferreri is the best person who can cover an advisory role for foreign emerging brands or artisans wishing to enter the luxury market or for young talents in need of mentorship and tutorship.
Kristian Snorre Andersen
Kristian Snorre Andersen is the CEO and co-founder of ADORNO International Design Collaboration, an exclusive digital gallery for collectible design and crafts. The first collections - from Turkey, Brazil, Belgium, Denmark, and Mexico - were launched on the ADORNO platform in 2017 (https://adorno.design/).
Today, in collaboration with leading international curators, ADORNO promotes and sells the work of defining designers and craftspeople from more than 30 cultural communities in Europe, Asia, and the Americas to a global audience.
The ultimate aim of the collaboration is to strengthen the businesses of the artists and the communities they work in. Kristian holds a Masters degree in political science from Aarhus University, Denmark and Philipps University-Marburg, Germany and has previously worked at Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy as well as the Environmental Ministry of Denmark. The topic of sustainable development has been a focal point throughout his studies, career, and in the development of ADORNO.
Liene Jākobsone
Liene Jākobsone is the leading partner at the architecture and design office Sampling. Since its founding in 2010, Sampling has carried out a vast range of projects: buildings and reconstructions of varios kinds of program, development concepts for larger territories, as well as exposition and product designs. Its projects have been extensively published, and received a number of awards, prizes and other kinds of recognitions in Latvia and abroad.
Liene Jākobsone is the head of the Department of Interior Design and a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture at the Art Academy of Latvia. She teaches theoretical and practical courses, and has authored numerous peer-reviewed papers as well as non-scientific publications on design.
Omnigroup
Omnigroup is a graphic design studio run by Leonardo Azzolini and Simon Mager. Established in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2016, the studio operates within the fields of visual identity, typeface, web and editorial design.
Omnigroup’s practice is seen as a container where various skills can merge and are expressed together towards a common goal. Creating visual tools is at the base of their collaborative practice and directly influences the development of a specific visual language within design projects of various scales. Omnigroup gives workshops and lectures at universities in Switzerland and abroad.
Next to their graphic design practice the studio runs the digital type foundry Omnitype, specializing on the design and the distribution of retail and custom typefaces.
The Studio has been awarded with the Prix David Rust, 2016, the Swiss Design Awards, 2017, The Josef Müller-Brockmann Price 2019 and was nominated for the Swiss Design Awards 2021 and 2022.
