FITE, the International Festival of Extraordinary Textiles, offers a unique opportunity to create an international stage to promote textiles with strong heritage and cultural significance. It invites all continents, generating encounters between craftsmen, textile designers, fashion designers, weavers, artists, collectors, decorators, enthusiasts and the curious, while linking heritage, tradition and contemporary creation.
Through textiles, FITE raises awareness of difference, hidden meanings, changes, modernity, to better understand the world in its diversity. It addresses social issues specific to different countries. Created in 2012, with the City of Clermont-Ferrand and the Bargoin Museum Clermont Auvergne Metropole, it has taken the gamble of coming back to Clermont-Ferrand every even year and leaving for another continent on odd years. It has taken place in Vietnam, the Philippines, Mexico, Romania, Senegal and soon in Lithuania. From 2012 to 2022, in 10 years, FITE has gone from 12,000 to 150,000 visitors spreading its territory.
In 2024, FITE becomes a Biennial and expands its territory in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and in Europe.