The “Feel The Yarn – Masterclass Edition 2026” knitwear design competition took place as part of the international Pitti Filati trade fair in Florence. Under the theme ‘Colour’, 34 up-and-coming designers from around the world presented their creative knitwear designs for the 2027/28 winter season to an international jury and audience.
This year, three Master’s students from the “Textile Product Design” degree programme at the Hochschule Niederrhein (HSNR) – Nina Becker, Kerstin Greul and Kai Nöcker – qualified for the competition. Their work was created as part of an experimental design process in which the development of shapes and surfaces begins directly with the processing of yarns, rather than relying on ready-made fabrics. The high-quality yarns used for the competition were supplied by the Italian spinning mills Manifattura IGEA S.p.a., Olimpias Group SRL and Naturali Filati.
Although, in the end, young design talents from Japan and Italy emerged victorious in a close contest, the designs by the three talented Master’s students – which were created through painstaking work in the HSNR’s various laboratories – received high praise. As well as presenting their designs, the competition offered the students the opportunity to engage with an international audience, make contacts and get to know various yarn companies.
“The quality and diversity of our degree programmes, in which creative and technical subjects are given equal weight, combined with the excellent laboratory facilities, offer students fantastic opportunities for development and consistently enable them to qualify and participate successfully at an international level,” emphasises Ellen Bendt, professor of Fashion Design with a specialisation in Knitwear and Innovative Product Design at the HSNR, who supervised the competition entrants from the Faculty of Textile and Clothing Technology.
The outfits created by the three students will be on display at the Textile Museum in Prato until October.
