The International Festival of Extra ordinary Textiles (FITE) offers this totally new event by creating an international scene to highlight textiles marked with strong heritage and cultural significations. The idea is to invite all continents, to organize a meeting place for craftspeople, textile designers, fashion designers, weavers, artists, collectors, decorators, passionate and curious people, all the while linking heritage, tradition and contemporary creation. This event insists on showing the human, economic and ecological stakes that are related to extra ordinary textiles.
Discover the 2018-2019 “Deviations” edition certified European cultural heritage 
As an initiative of the HS_Projets Association, co-organized by the City of Clermont-Ferrand and the Musée Bargoin, the FITE pursues in a new way the action led by the Musée Bargoin for more than 15 years in terms of highlighting extra-European textiles. With the Unesco patronage, the first edition of the FITE will have metamorphoses as its main theme: metamorphoses of the vision of cultures, of raw materials in textile, of decor techniques, of the geopolitical world. At the heart of the Festival, the exhibition Métamorphoses received the “National Interest” label from the Ministry of Culture and Communication.
Concept
The International Festival of Extra ordinary Textiles is nomadic and invites all 5 five continents. On even years, it will make Clermont-Ferrand vibrate to the rhythm of the world, and on odd years, the event will be organized in a foreign city.
Through a rich and varied program, the aim is to evoke and share aesthetics, know hows, society issues, universes leading visitors but also invited artists, craftspeople, stylists and designers to change their vision and look differently at the world.
Highlighting the notion of know how linked to a cultural heritage is thus essential.
For this first edition, the selected theme –metamorphoses – reflects the general philosophy of the Festival:
changing our vision, moving off-center,
changing our perception of people and of the world.
The event is for all publics and almost all activities are free.