Lana Dumitru is a designer and digital artist awarded by Forbes with “the best young Romanian fashion designer” award. Her eponymous label and design studio is currently based in Lisbon.

Lana has finished her research in London and earned a PhD in Digital Arts and Fashion.

You can consider LD an artist manifesting her beliefs through design and fashion as you would find Lana’s clothing in an art gallery or in a museum but also in a shop.

Her original style comes from the fact that she designs all her visuals and patterns, transforming pure white fabrics into strong unique conceptual pieces through the means of digital printing, laser cutting and digital prototyping. The Lana Dumitru Design Studio is collaborating for more than 10 years with other brands, companies, doing bespoke and commissioned work, artistic collaborations, textile design, new media, digital design and so on.

Lana is the first Romanian designer to officially collaborate with Puma in a custom print jacket coined “T7 Etno Shake Puma by Lana” and with many other international brands and companies.

She was included by Forbes in Top 30 under 30 entrepreneurs and her work has been showcased at London Fashion Week/International Fashion Showcase, Strasbourg Fashion Week, Holon Design Museum, Kalmar Art Museum and Malmö Design Centre Sweden, Salone del Mobile Milano, Horniman Museum London, National Village Museum Bucharest, Cultural Institutes, Art Galleries, Design Weeks around the world and more.

In 2017, Lana co-founded the brand Foræva together with architect Vlad Tenu, dressing artists like Bjork and working with brands like Swarovski International.

With many collections in her portfolio which have consisted, until now, in “wearable opinions”- as she describes her clothes- Lana has won the jury’s appreciation in various design competitions: Puma Creativity Award, Pasarela/Institut Francais de la Mode contest finalist, Elle Decoration- Design of the year nominee- Lana for Photoliu, Young Creative Chevrolet Award-Romania, product design awards, etc. and added to her credentials the quality of being a previous member of the digital design team for Mary Katrantzou in London.

Newspapers and magazines like Vogue, New York Times, La Repubblica etc. published her works.

Vlad Tenu is a Romanian-British architect based in London.
From architectural design and teaching to art installations, sculptures, modular assembly systems and wearable art pieces, Vlad’s work is a continuous explorative research into spatiality, scale and materiality.

Inspired by underlying processes of nature, his design workflow is a symbiotic mix of art and science involving mathematical concepts and algorithmic techniques.

Vlad’s cross-disciplinary approach to design and fabrication is about reinventing the digital craft in the creation of ambitious, experiential designs: site specific sculptural installations, exhibition pavilions and pop-up display pieces, public art and private commissions, as well as creative collaborations with international brands and celebrities.

His experimental work includes award-wining pieces such as Minimal Complexity, the winner of the TEX-FAB Repeat Competition 2010 and an AIA Houston Design Award 2012. The piece was also exhibited at London Festival of Architecture 2012, London Design Festival 2012 and Sleep Hotel 2013.

Solo exhibitions include Synthetic Nature London 2013 and Glimpses of Infinite Symmetry Bucharest 2014. He was also the curator of Process – an exhibition on cutting-edge architectural designs in Shanghai in 2014.

His modular system Miniplex was exhibited in various configurations at London Festival of Architecture 2017, Plug-in-to-the-future at ARUP Phase2 Gallery London and Shenzhen Design Week 2019. Vlad’s works have also been displayed in art and technology festivals such as Unfinished 2018 and BINAR 2019 in Bucharest.

Vlad Tenu co-founded FORÆVA with fashion designer Lana Dumitru. Working in collaboration with Swarovski, they designed and produced a crystal dress made of 25,000 Swarovski crystals. The dress has been launched at Swarovski’s Brilliance Redefined exhibition in Hong Kong and worn on stage by Björk as part of her Utopia Tour 2018.
His previous fashion collaborations include head pieces and a display piece for CLON8 at Paris Fashion Week 2015 and a modular pop-up shop for Del Rio London at LeBonMarché in Paris in 2015.

Vlad Tenu studied architecture in Iasi, Lisbon and London at the Bartlett UCL, where he has been awarded a MSc. in Adaptive Architecture & Computation in 2009 and a Certificate in Advanced Architectural Research in 2010.

He has been involved in teaching at the Bartlett since 2009, initially as an assistant and currently as a dissertation technical tutor on the Architectural Computation course.

Vlad gave lectures and presentations at leading academic institutions such as the Architectural Association, Bartlett, G.D. Hines College of Architecture in Houston, Aarhus School of Architecture and Cooper Union in New York during ACADIA 2010 Conference.

Vlad Tenu also took part in various discussion panels and presented at international design events and conferences such as Shenzhen Design Week 2019, SHARE X Bucharest 2019, EUSight Talks in Shanghai 2014, Galateca Bucharest 2014, Rising Minds inaugural session at Shoreditch House 2013 and BIFE Conference in Bucharest 2012.

Dr Theodor Cojoianu is an Associate Professor in Energy Finance at the University of Edinburgh. Theodor’s work at the intersection between sustainability, data science and finance is focused on applying innovative research methods to the study of sustainable development issues. His work has led him to be invited as a Member of the European Commission’s Platform on Sustainable Finance, where he advises the Commission on EU sustainable finance policy and on HM Treasury’s Green Technical Advisory Group.

Theodor also serves:

• as Academic-in-Residence in Agent Green and Sustainable Nation Ireland
• on the advisory board of the EU Energy Efficiency Mortgages Initiative
• as a member of Green Finance Ireland
• as an Executive Committee Member on the Global Network on Financial Geography (Fingeo)

Previously, he held appointments in the sustainable finance space in both academic and finance industry organisations. He worked in academia within the Centre for Responsible Banking and Finance at the University of St Andrews, the ICMA Centre at the University of Reading and the University of Edinburgh Business School. He was previously an analyst with MSCI ESG Research in London and affiliated with Sociovestix Labs and Sustainable Investment Partners.

Leslie Holden is a co-founder at The Digital Fashion Group (TDFG), a European-led collaboration established in 2020.

TDFG unites Fashion Academics and Industry Innovators to equip fashion professionals and educators with the essential skills, mindset, and strategies needed for the digitalisation of fashion. Leslie’s extensive knowledge, experience, and network have been cultivated through his work across all sectors of the fashion value chain and fashion education. At TDFG, Leslie leverages his expertise to review, assess, and advise organisations, institutions, and governments on digital developments within academia and across the entire fashion value chain. This encompasses research, sustainability, design, development, manufacturing, and retail. His leadership is instrumental in driving forward the digital transformation of the fashion industry.

Prior to co-founding TDFG, Leslie served as the Head of Fashion at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute (AMFI) and was a board member for over 14 years. During his tenure, he spearheaded the redevelopment of the international curricula, with a strong focus on digitalisation and sustainability. Leslie’s career also includes over two decades as a design director and entrepreneur, during which he contributed to prestigious brands like Dunhill, Stefanel, Byblos, Burberry, and Liberty.

Leslie’s commitment to the fashion industry extends beyond his roles in academia and industry. He is a mentor for The Farfetch Incubator Programme, a member of the Steering Committee of The EU Worth Partnership Project, and an EU expert for the creative industries. He also holds significant advisory positions as the co-chair of Manchester Fashion Institute’s External Advisory Board, and as a member of the Advisory Boards of Digital Fashion Week and The Metaverse Fashion Council. His past roles include serving as an Executive Board member of the International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutes (IFFTI) and a trustee of The UK Graduate Fashion Foundation. An experienced keynote speaker and moderator, Leslie holds a degree from The Royal College of Art. His career is marked by a dedication to advancing the fashion industry through innovation and education, making him a pivotal figure in the intersection of fashion and technology.

Ionut Tata is a serial entrepreneur, having founded 6 organisations, including Iceberg Plus, an innovation consulting and tech transfer company that is deeply involved in the CEE innovation ecosystem. For the past 3 years, Ionut has been leading Icebergs’ participation in the EIT RIS ecosystem, first as EIT InnoEnergy RIS Hub, and in the meantime as EIT Manufacturing and EIT Urban Mobility RIS Hub. Beyond the work with EIT, Ionut is coordinating the Entrepreneurship Taskforce in the Coalition for Development of Romania, the Innovation and Technology Cluster in Brasov and the National ICT Cluster Network. He has accumulated extensive experience in public policy development, participating in the drafting of numerous policy documents, including ex ante analysis, national strategies, and others. He has been working as a subject matter expert for the European Commission and the World Bank and is currently researching for his PhD at the Polyethnic University of Bucharest.

Adrian Buga is an Art Historian, an Expert on antiques and an Independent Curator.

Adrian Buga has dedicated his entire career to forgotten Romanian artists and the recovery of art objects that belonged to the Royal Family of Romania, he has been a consultant to the House of His Majesty King Michael I of Romania and is currently a certified expert of the Ministry of Culture in the fields of 20th-century Romanian paintings; Royal Art Collection; Jewish objects of worship. In 2008 he founded an art consulting company ARGO Art Consulting and, in 2014 the ARGO Art Publishing – www.argoart.ro