IMprobable fashion
June 4-5, 2026
Paris
You know Design Thinking.
Now meet its more rebellious, Parisian cousin:
Art Thinking, where fashion, art, and the improbable collide.
Artworks by Nicolas Guiraud
Fashion is the most immediate expression of the zeitgeist—the cultural mood of our time. Today, it stands at the center of accelerating uncertainty.
From pandemic dressing to TikTok aesthetics, from heritage luxury to ultra-fast fashion, the industry is transforming at unprecedented speed. Algorithmic visibility, digital communities, social media, and artificial intelligence are reshaping not only markets but identity, desire, aesthetics, and time itself.
In this environment, leaders must rethink business models, creative processes, organizational structures, and systemic impact. Traditional paradigms are no longer sufficient. The future demands new forms of value creation that integrate sustainability, digital acceleration, and cultural relevance.
I believe in blurring the lines between art and fashion.
M. Margiela
Improbable Fashion is a two-day executive seminar designed by ESCP Business School’s Improbable Chair by Galeries Lafayette to meet this challenge. Using Art Thinking, an evidence-based methodology developed by Professor Sylvain Bureau, participants learn to navigate uncertainty, unlock strategic imagination, and generate bold, cross-disciplinary solutions.
Rooted in fashion’s history of radical artistic disruption—from Schiaparelli’s Surrealism to Margiela’s conceptual subversion—the program equips participants not only to anticipate change, but to shape it.
Bringing together industry leaders and selected students from ENSAD, Mines, Dauphine (PSL), Stanford University, and ESCP Business School, Improbable Fashion creates a rare, intergenerational and interdisciplinary space to prototype the future of fashion.
Strategic Angles
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Understand how artificial intelligence and human creativity co-evolve. Move from automation to augmentation, redefining authorship, design processes, and creative leadership in fashion.
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Go beyond campaigns. Design meaningful, long-term brand narratives that build emotional connection, cultural relevance, and community.
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Reinvent retail as an immersive ecosystem—blending digital and physical spaces into seamless, memorable brand experiences.
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Shift from linear production to circular and regenerative strategies. Rethink value creation across sourcing, production, and consumption.
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Redefine fashion’s role in a world shaped by planetary limits, ethical urgency, and shifting societal values. Learn to innovate within constraint.
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Develop the capacity to lead through ambiguity, acceleration, and paradox. Cultivate strategic imagination and talents in a rapidly transforming industry.
Learning Experience
Designed by Professor Sylvain Bureau and artist Pierre Tectin at ESCP, Improbable has been listed as Highly Commended by the Financial Times and is taught internationally—from Stanford University to the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT).
Improbable Fashion is an immersive, high-intensity experience that transforms skills, mindsets, projects, and networks. It is not traditional training, but a lasting learning journey.
Through masterclasses, intense workshops, and curated creative tension, participants challenge conventional business thinking and unlock new strategic perspectives. Using disruptive practices—deviation, conceptual experimentation, material and narrative subversion—they create a bold, improbable art piece unveiled during a memorable vernissage.
Key Outcomes
Use Art Thinking as a concrete transformation tool for business and creativity
Strengthen creative leadership in times of uncertainty
Master AI × Artistic Intelligence as strategic drivers of innovation
Rethink fashion models in the age of the Anthropocene
Expand your ecosystem through rare intergenerational and cross-disciplinary collaboration
Prototype bold, improbable perspectives ready to challenge dominant industry logics
Earn the Art Thinking Certificate from ESCP Business School
THE PATTERNS CONSTRUCTING YOUR TWO DAYS:
Learn how to move things
Each conference explores essential concepts through two case studies—one from business and one from the arts—both rooted in the fashion sector.
Put it into practice
Each workshop turns these insights into action, guiding you through hands-on experimentation and feedback to shape a final artistic proposition that challenges the status quo and opens new perspectives.
Day 1 — April 22 9:00 AM - 06:00 PMThis Is Not a Fashion Workshop09:00 AM
Introduction to Art Thinking: From trends to creating new aesthetics
Steal Like an Artist (#Deviate)09:30 AM
Explore appropriation, remix, and reinterpretation in fashion
BREAK10:15 AM
Create Your First Food Monster10:30 AM
Monster Workshop: Create a bold, imperfect, provocative fashion concept.
What Must Die in Fashion? (#Destroy)11:30 AM
Challenge norms, trends, and your own assumptions.
Lunch & Barter Workshop12:00 PM
Exchange garments, stories, identities instead of buying
From the Creator to the Creative Collective (#Donate)01:30 PM
Build your creative scenius in fashion
The Critical Monster Workshop: Kill Your Darlings02:15 PM
Iterate and refine your fashion monster
Design Without a Collection (#Drift)03:30 PM
Create without predefined goals and outcomes
BREAK04:15 PM
Embodiment: Connect your Body, Soul and Mind to Your Fashion04:30 PM
Create a strong connection between your identity, values, and creation
Peer-to-Peer Workshop: Radical Feedback05:30 PM
Critique without killing confidence and creativity
End of Day06:00 PM
Day 2 — April 239:00 AM - 09:00 PMFashion Is a Dialogue (#Dialogue)09:00 AM
Creation emerges through interaction: conversations shape what gets created
Jazz Band Workshop: Improvisation Atelier10:15 AM
Experiment with collective creation and real-time coordination
LUNCH12:30 AM
From Garment to Statement: How Do You Make It Legit? (#Display)01:30 PM
Understand how creations gain recognition, credibility, and visibility
Label Workshop: Stage Your Fashion02:15 PM
Exhibition, installation, and positioning
Vernissage: The Improbable Runway / SHOWROOM06:30 PM
Exhibition of creations and on-going lively discussions!
FINAL CLAP09:00 PM
Who Will You Learn With?
Participants :
Executives and leaders from the fashion and creative industries
Selected students from ENAMOMA (Ensad / Mines / Dauphine / PSL), Stanford University, and ESCP Business School
Speakers and mentors :
Pr. Sylvain Bureau - Prof. ESCP, Founder of the art thinking method, PhD Ecole polytechnique, instructor at Stanford, Fashion Institute of Technology, Ivey, etc.
Takeru Costes: Ballet dancer, Opera de Paris
Emilie Kirsch - Resident artist for Petit H, Hermès
Nicolas Guiraud - Photographer (Magnum) and artists / founder and creative Director of Fashion Magazine
Seamus Yu Harte - Head of Learning Experience, d.school, Stanford University
Format & Location
2 daysDuration:EnglishLanguage:ParisLOcation:Executives 1450 EUR (Grants available)Pricing:ENTREPRENEURS 500 EUR (grants available)STUDENTS 50 EUR (grants available)An Improbable Executive Education experience by ESCP Business School to shape the future of fashion.