This year the Festival was held under the motto "Virtual Worlds of the Admiralty Needle": the use of virtual reality, neural networks and artificial intelligence enabled designers not to limit their imagination and embody the most daring ideas when creating digital and real design images. Thanks to the appearance of new competitive nominations, such as "Fashion and Augmented Reality", there was a more in-depth immersion in the world of digital and virtual fashion.


More than 350 designers from Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, China, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan took part in the competition program and in the expert evaluation of the works. 53 collections of clothes passed to the final.
Aishat Saidova (Dagestan, Russia) with the collection "Post-man" became the winner of the Grand Prix of the competition in the amount of 500 thousand rubles.

"This year we are paying great attention to the most modern digital technologies in design, the use of virtual, augmented, animated 3D reality in the field of fashion. Young designers create not only real and virtual collections of clothes, but also offer architectural three-dimensional solutions to the AR space of fashion museums and multimedia exhibition projects," said Alexey Demidov, President of the competition, Rector of Ƶ.

Fashion as an art is a powerful tool for multicultural exchange and the search for new silhouettes and diverse forms. The analysis and study of various cultures and ethnos, national traditions allows modern designers to make their significant contribution to world fashion. This contributes to the understanding of other cultures, as well as to express their individuality, identity and fashion identification, contributes to the creation of new archetypes in costume.

Special attention was attracted by the exhibition "Cultural code. RF. Encyclopedia of Cultural Meanings. St. Petersburg". The artistic director of the festival, Professor of Ƶ Lyubov Dzhikiya noted: "The Admiralty Needle International Festival focuses not only on multimedia technologies, but is also immersed in the cultural code of Russia and its DNA, and is also aimed at studying the cultural code of foreign countries. The festival helps to identify the national culture. In the era of globalization, only the people who value their history, culture, language and traditions can be successful, while making the preservation of the identity of all nationalities one of their strategic priorities."

The opening of the festival was held under the motto "From the podium to life. Expanding the horizons of fashion" with the participation of Russian composer and performer Grigory Gladkov, whose name is listed in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of children's songs.
Vladimir Knyaginin, Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg, took part in the opening ceremony: "The Admiralty Needle Festival contributes to the significant development of design, light and textile industries in Russia. It is important for us that we help young people in their formation. A creative profession requires recognition from both colleagues in the workshop, as well as from the media and the general audience. That is why we support the university within the framework of this competition."
As part of the opening ceremony, the guests of the evening were presented with a collection of casual clothes in a business style for schoolchildren and a collection of youth clothing dedicated to the art of Kandinsky and Malevich, the period of Soviet constructivism.
During the unique fashion show "The Beautiful Epoch", the audience immersed themselves in the fashion of the 19th and 20th centuries: the premiere of a collection of vintage clothing, including unique images of the early 20th century, Soviet fashion of the 30-40s, as well as styles of the 70s and 90s of the last century from private collections, took place.

Everyone could attend the open master classes "What is happening with fashion in Russia and in the world today?", which were conducted by leading fashion experts: Bing Chen (Shanghai, China), Danilo Luigi Mercaldo (Milan, Italy), Anastasia Kotova (Moscow, Russia), Federico Sangalli (Milan, Italy), Marina Demchenko (Moscow, Russia).
The opening of the exhibition "The Beautiful Epoch" — an exposition of vintage fashion, the virtual fashion museum of the University of PROMTECHDESIGN, created in the digital space by students of Ƶ, the exhibition "Time to win", which presents a collection of branded clothing designed for sports teams of the university, as well as collections of merch, also created by students of Ƶ for the Zenit football club.
For the first time, an open showroom was organized for the participants of the B. M.18 Festival, where designers presented collections that were included in the final of the competition program.
At the VIP show "Enchanted by Fashion", the audience enjoyed the beauty of the premiere collections of Russian and foreign designers: the brand "Azukar Moreno" (Tashkent, Uzbekistan), "Plywood over Bordeaux" by St. Petersburg designer Roman Sharuk, the Haute Couture House "Maison Sangali". The audience also saw the famous dress of the designer, a graduate of SPbGUPTD Olga Malyarova "Crown of the Russian Empire", created for the Russian participant of the Miss Universe contest and the premiere of the brilliant Hermitage collection.
The festival ended with an emotional Gala screening, after which prizes were awarded to the winners. The mood of a real refined holiday was created for the audience by the star of the jazz scene, twenty-two-year-old Sofia Atsbeha-Negga, a superfinalist of the Blue Bird project, performed a magnificent solo jazz part.

A special emphasis of the Festival was the design of the concert hall of Ƶ, where all fashion shows took place: the audience got into the virtual space world of the future, in which they felt like travelers in time and digital space. Damiano Antonazzo, Chairman of the international jury, Regional Director for Development at Istituto Marangoni Milano (Milan, Italy) noted that every year Admiralty Needle opens up new names of high fashion to the world, which are in demand both in Russia and far beyond its borders.
Program Coordinator of the University of Fashion Greenwich (Karachi, Pakistan) Nur Hassan, who visited the Admiralty Needle festival for the first time, drew attention to the high level of organization of events and noted the professional approach of participants to creating collections and creativity. Bin Chen, a professor at the Institute of Design at Donghua University, expressed his admiration for the original collections of Russian young designers.
The founder of the Admiralty Needle Festival is the Ƶ.


