Adrien Yakimov Roberts

International Director of Education at Accademia Costume & Moda, Rome & Milan Italy
International Trustee of Graduate Fashion Foundation, GFW, London, UK.

British born and educated; Adrien Roberts started his career studying Fashion Design at St. Martin’s School of Art (now known as Central St. Martin’s).
The menswear area of Fashion was always where Adrien wanted to research and experiment, recognizing the scope for change, and went on to study the subject at Master’s Level at the Royal College of Art in London.

On moving to Italy, following graduation, Adrien worked for many menswear brands, before setting up a knitwear label under own name. The Adrien Parry Roberts collections sold in London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo in some of the world’s top stores. It was during this time Adrien began to teach fashion design, taking a variety of roles at many different institutes internationally.

Later moving back to the UK became involved in fulltime education at UAL, University of the Arts London, undertaking a PG Certificate in Education Practice for creative subjects and later taking role of Programme Leader – Fashion Design, Enterprise & Innovation at UCA, University of the Creative Arts.

Adrien was later named as Group Director of Education at Istituto Marangoni in Milan, London & Paris and was responsible for all the validation process with MMU (Manchester Metropolitan University) and rewriting of the courses, creating new courses and regulations and leading the institution through QAA reviews and onto international growth.

Currently International Director of Education at Accademia Costume & Moda based in Rome, responsible for internationalization and programme and academic development at the prestigious Roman academy and on their behalf internationally. Responsible for ACM courses at partner schools internationally.

For many years has been a trustee of the British charity Graduate Fashion Foundation, a charitable foundation supporting the showcasing graduate fashion and crating Graduate Fashion Week which is about to celebrates its 30th anniversary.
Personally, responsible for creating and developing the GFW International which currently involves some of the top 70 schools globally making it the biggest international fashion graduate event now also launching the online version of GFW internationally for 2021.

Adrien has been an official talent scout at events, member of a variety of advisory boards internationally, academic external examiner, a graduate mentor offering career guidance and an inspirational guide; attending and participating in research events, fashion seminars and fashion weeks internationally over the past few years in many countries – across Europe & UK, Russia, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Israel, United Arab Emirates, USA, Colombia, Mexico, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China.
In 2020 Adrien has successfully substituted physical international activities with webinars, lectures and interviews finding a new, and some ways, a better form of communicating.

Constantly passionate about design Adrien continues to research, design and create. Being involved in education he sees as the best opportunity to also learn, experiment and expand knowledge across cultures and disciplines.