The Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana has announced the recipients of its 2026 Fashion Trust grants, awarding €70,000 each to three emerging Italian labels — Act N°1, Institution, and Materia — in a ceremony held at Milan’s Palazzo Reale. The grants, now in their fifth edition, are designed to bridge the gap between critical acclaim and commercial viability for independent Italian designers, a category that has produced some of fashion’s most influential voices but rarely enjoys the financial infrastructure required to scale.
The ceremony at Palazzo Reale drew a cross-section of the Italian fashion establishment, from industrialists to editors to the designers themselves — a reminder that Milan, for all its corporate polish, still maintains the village-like intimacy that has made it a fertile ground for emerging talent. For Act N°1, Institution, and Materia, the grants provide not just capital but validation: a signal from the industry’s governing body that the experimental, the intellectual, and the materially innovative still have a place in Italian fashion’s future.
Institution, the project of designer Domenico Orefice, approaches fashion from a more architectural perspective, with garments that explore the relationship between the body and the structures that contain it. Orefice’s collections are characterized by sculptural volumes — exaggerated shoulders, cinched waists, draped constructions that transform the human form into something approaching abstract geometry. The grant will support the expansion of Institution’s atelier and the development of a direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform, a channel the brand has not yet fully developed.
The CNMI Fashion Trust grants are part of a broader effort by the Italian fashion chamber to support emerging talent in a market dominated by family-owned industrial dynasties and multinational luxury conglomerates. Unlike similar programs in the United States or the United Kingdom, the CNMI grants are structured as non-repayable funding with no equity stake attached — a reflection of the Italian fashion industry’s recognition that its future depends on the health of its independent design ecosystem. The three recipients will also receive mentorship from CNMI member brands and access to the chamber’s network of manufacturers, suppliers, and retail partners.
Act N°1, founded by Luca Lin and Sabrina Sammarco, has built a following for collections that weave the designers’ respective Chinese and Italian heritages into garments that feel both deeply personal and broadly resonant. Their work — hand-painted silks, reconstructed vintage kimonos, tailoring with asymmetrical closures — occupies a space between cultural commentary and the kind of poetic abstraction that has made them favorites of the Milan Fashion Week calendar since their debut in 2016.
