Marangoni names Sonia Ben Maaouia as Postgraduate Program Leader

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Dec 11, 2020

The Istituto Marangoni has named Sonia Ben Maaouia to be the postgraduate program leader, on the Paris campus of the international fashion college.

 
Maaouia joins Marangoni from Karla Otto, where she spent the last eight years as client director in Paris at the key fashion and luxury agency.
 
Fluent in French and English, Ben Maaouia started her new position on Thursday. She plans to leverage her longstanding connections with brands, designers, editors and professionals and bring them to Marangoni for lectures, masterclasses, conferences and intimate meetings with students.

The appointment comes at a moment when fashion houses are increasingly linking up creatively with students. In Italy, Marangoni recently announced the creation of Fendi Styling Academy, a project to improve the performance of the brand’s salespeople by partnering with the fashion school to set up dedicated training.
 
“I am really delighted about this new position. I realized that fashion has been lost in translation with the worldwide health crisis. I felt the need to refresh how we think about fashion today. So, by sharing my experience with students, I will also witness the fashion world from another angle, especially with new technologies,” said Ben Maaouia, who will report to Marangoni college director Valerie Berdah-Levy.
 
Prior to Karla Otto, Ben Maaouia, who has a degree in economics from the University of Orléans and in management from Dundee University, Scotland, worked for Schiaparelli and Roger Vivier.
 
One Ben Maaouia goal is for key houses to collaborate with the college on real projects, like digital campaigns developed by students, since the Marangoni has photo and video studios in its Paris campus located on rue Miromesnil in the eighth arrondissement.