A visit with Hakan Baykam at the Instituto Marangoni
By Harriet Mays Powell
I recently met with Hakan Baykam, CEO and President of Instituto Marangoni Miami (IMM), at his office in the fashion school’s seven-floor building in the heart of Miami’s Design District. Although born in Turkey, Baykam was raised in Italy and consequently speaks English with a pronounced Italian accent.
“Today, there are nine Marangoni schools around the world, with the three most important being in the fashion capitals of Europe – Milan, Paris, and London,” Baykam tells me, and it was in Milan that the first Instituto Marangoni was founded in 1935 by the tailor Giulio Marangoni. Its famous alumni include Franco Moschino, Alessandra Fracchinetti, Julie de Libran, Alessandro Santori, and Domenico Dolce of Dolce & Gabbana fame.
Meanwhile, Miami, Florence, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Mumbai, and Dubai make up the rest of the institute’s global footprint. Each school has a distinct personality that reflects the local culture and market, says Baykam. “London is very avant-garde, Milan is very pragmatic with perfect tailoring, and Paris is the most elegant,” he explains. “But Miami
is unique, a melting pot, because everyone and everything comes together here.” The institute has already attracted the attention of leading professionals like the CMOs of Under Armour and Tommy Hilfiger and Nike’s creative director.
Baykam arrived in Florida from Milan in 2015, and finally opened the doors to the Miami Institute in 2018 after a long and difficult bureaucratic process. He says he bet on Miami’s potential because the city “is no longer just a shopping destination, but an educational hub, which will attract the untapped talent from Latin America.”
To help achieve this, IMM arranges an annual “Miami Fashion Movement” tour across the region. The year’s top five students travel to fashion weeks in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, and Panama, where their work is showcased in runway shows. (Plans are underway for the tour to be extended to Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil.) Simultaneously, the school scouts the top local talent and offers scholarships for study at IMM.
The school provides additional scholarships through an innovative partnership with Zepeto – an app and social media platform – which allows students to personalize avatars and to create virtual fashion designs within a digital facsimile of the school’s campus. Ultimately, says Baykam, such virtual designs set in virtual worlds can help brands predict the probable success of their collections before sourcing materials and actually manufacturing the product, greatly reducing the wasteful “fast fashion” of firms like Zara and H&M.
A core tenet running throughout the curriculum is sustainability. Given that fashion is a leading global polluter, reducing waste and designing with the earth’s ecosystems in mind is fundamental to IMM’s mission. Recently, students were given recycled army uniforms from Goodwill and tasked with transforming them into Haute Couture ballgowns; men’s silk ties donated by Ferragamo were turned into short dresses; and, my personal favorite, a white pleated dress that would not be out of place on a Paris catwalk was created from second-hand bedsheets donated by SoHo house.
IMM combines the Italian way of teaching, which is very “hands on,” with the innate business ethos of America. The aim, Baykan says, is to graduate students who are not only creative, but also have a solid understanding of business; a lack of financial savvy is often cited as one of the major stumbling blocks for burgeoning designers. The institute offers several master’s degrees, numerous B.A. diplomas, and one-year intensive courses.
Baykam’s bet clearly seems to be paying off. With just 20 students enrolled in 2018, he expects to end this year with approximately 450. The long-term goal is to persuade graduates to stay in Miami. To this end, Baykam has created strong relationships and collaborations with local companies. Pre-pandemic, in 2020, he claims that IMM placed 100 percent of its students in paying jobs after graduation.
Baykam’s other passion is to cultivate the untapped creative talent from Latin America, which he insists is totally underestimated. “They just didn’t have access to the fashion world. So, Miami – and a degree from IMM – can be their bridge,” he says.
There is still plenty of work to do. In the next two years, Baykan hopes to secure land for an adjunct campus, build dormitories and housing for the students, and create a space for larger events and runway shows. When all is complete, he says he will have fulfilled his dream of creating a “fashion city” in Miami.
