DUBAI: Leading Italian fashion and design school Istituto Marangoni is planning to open a new branch in Dubai in September. Istituto Marangoni has schools in global centers including Milan, Paris, London, Mumbai, Miami and Florence. The UAE unit will be located in the Dubai International Financial Center. According to Stefania Valenti, the managing director, the launch comes after two years of preparations. “We identified a location that is prestigious and functional,” Valenti told fashion magazine WWD. “The area of Dubai is not that developed in terms of fashion and design-focused higher education. There is no vertical offering, but general institutions that have just a couple of courses.” Valenti said that the school is already working on a series of collaborations in the region. The Dubai branch will allow students to spend one or more years in any of Istituto Marangoni’s nine other units around the world. Among the school’s alumni are designers Franco Moschino and Alessandra Facchinetti from Italy, Julie de Libran from France, Rahul Mishra from India, Rafael Lopez from Mexico and Sandra Mansour from Lebanon.