Substructure – Inside the Creative Architecture of Fashion is the first exhibition from IED – Istituto Europeo di Design and will be in Paris from July 17 to 19, 2026. The exhibition is hosted within the spaces of Dover Street Market, the multi-brand concept store in the Marais district, co-conceived by Rei Kawakubo, the Japanese fashion designer and founder of Comme des Garçons.

IED – Istituto Europeo di Design conceived its first exhibition—curated by Umberto Sannino and Serena Toffetti—to offer an unconventional perspective on fashion. Rather than presenting it through finished garments, Substructure enters the hidden framework that exists beneath a collection: images, references, sketches, fragments, toiles, doubts, gestures, research materials, and projected thoughts.

The exhibition reveals the invisible side of fashion

The exhibition does not present fashion as an outcome, but as a system of invisible foundations. It focuses on the moment before fashion becomes visible, when intuition, memory, research, and technique begin to generate form.

The space is almost empty. Video projections activate the walls like moving mental images, creating an environment where the audience enters a mind at work. A few toiles appear as silent presences: unfinished, untouchable, suspended between idea and garment.


Substructure
Dover Street Market
35/37 di Rue des Francs-Bourgeois
July 17 - 19, 2026