Paolina Russo brand that cleans dust from knitting

In the middle of August, the streets of Copenhagen were filled with taffeta, shoulder straps and bright colors. And for good reason, the Danish capital has kept pace with its Fashion Week and Nordic brand parades. Over the years, this Danish fashion week has become an unforgettable summer event criss-crossed with silhouettes. too big and eco-responsible gear. And in this season, a name has appeared in conversations for a long time – Paolina Russo. The London-based label received the Zalando Visionary Award, which honors the brand for its creativity and innovation. The award comes with an envelope of €50,000 as well as funding for a fashion show at Copenhagen Fashion Week.

A very young brand offers an aesthetic combination knitted clothes and asymmetrical, deconstructed silhouettes whose colors range from green to yellow through brown to blue. It has an almost tribal look, decorated with ancestral motifs. And a central place given to innovation, relying heavily on the alliance of craft techniques and industrial know-how. These co-founders use natural fibers and use certified manufacturers. Meet those dusting off knitwear.

Miss Figaro. – This was your first show after graduating from Central Saint Martins in London. How did you feel?

Paolina Russo. – It was a really intense experience. We had a great team of people working with us both virtually and on-site in Copenhagen. It’s a story of several people who came together and created a moment together, this last moment, and I felt like it wasn’t my moment, finally, this moment belonged to everyone who worked on it. In fact, it is crazy to see the transformation of the abstract into the concrete.

Lucille Gilmard. – We started the collection not knowing that there would be a fashion show. This one came a little later, so it was really exciting. We understood that the story we created would be told on stage, and in Copenhagen. We had never been to Copenhagen, never had a parade, it was a series of firsts. Our work and that of the entire team traveled with us and it was truly a celebration.

In the stands in Copenhagen, we could see your parents and loved ones standing up and applauding you. Did you grow up in a creative environment?

PR:. – My mother always encouraged me to create, to find my way of artistic expression. She would talk to me about pictures, paintings, and my grandmother would talk to me about sewing. Our house was full of art supplies, my mother didn’t throw anything away, not even cereal boxes, thinking that it might be useful to me. I was driven to use what we had to create when we didn’t have much in terms of access to materials or even culture. By that I mean art galleries because we lived in the suburbs. I am grateful to have grown up in a home that nurtured creativity and the idea that you can still create even without having.

LG:. – It’s different from me. I grew up in a conservative environment where creativity was a hobby, not a job. I heard it a lot around me, except my parents. My father, for example, taught me to sew. Her brother had a maternity clothing brand that had a store on the west coast of France and my dad worked there, so he really introduced me to the whole idea of ​​clothing design. But given the environment, it was something inside and not outside, it was up to us.

You both did internships at big houses, what did that bring you?

LG: – I think it is a very different kind of education that completes the school. At school we discover the community spirit of fashion, because everyone is there with the same will, the same state of mind, we spend our days doing the same thing. A lot of the people we work with today are actually acquaintances from school, so it’s quite an exchange network, and that’s an important liberating step in the creative process. Then we do our internship, personally I went to Paris for Sonia Rykiel and New York for Marc Jacobs. It was very interesting to observe how a brand works from one end of the Earth to the other and what impact it can have on its surroundings.

PR: – Yes, only when I entered a house, I was able to understand how the brand actually works. In school, finally, we focus on creativity without understanding the reason for it, and it is during practice that we realize the whole practical dimension. I had the opportunity to join Martin Margiela under John Galliano, work closely with him, work on many pieces from the collection. Apart from the obvious learning, it was a real boost in confidence in my creativity and I modeled the way I work on him in the sense that everyone in the team has a real voice.

The Zalando Visionary Award honors both design and design‘eco-responsibility. How do you combine the two?

PG: – A big part of our thinking is stability. Knitwear, for example, which is the basis of our collection, is a material that holds up well over time and can be passed down from generation to generation. It allows for a fun and dreamy design, but the material itself can last for many years.

LG: – I think what works well, what can highlight the dream, is to offer durable pieces without being obvious. For our Fall/Winter 2023/2024 collection, for example, we created our own knitting technique, which we called Illusion, and the pieces were dyed by hand and on site with natural dyes, which surprised many. The idea is to take responsibility on our end and let people be surprised.

PR:. – Yes, that’s it, we have to prove that ecology does not know strict aesthetics. It’s in the production that the long-term thinking takes place, but the result can still be fun and expressive.

Why did you choose to work with knitwear?

PR:. – There is a part that is not accidental, because I studied knitting. This was my MA major at Central Saint Martins. While I always liked using both hands to make clothes, it wasn’t until school years, when knitting became my hobby, that I became obsessed with the technical side of it. This. Lucy, like me, loves crafts that have a history, a past, and weaving them offers an endless number of possibilities. It can be around for thousands of years, in thousands of versions, and yet you can still create something completely new, that’s super exciting.

It is often said that reusing clothes starts at home, rummaging through the wardrobes of our elders. What clothes have you stolen or borrowed long-term from your family members?

LG: – Maybe the clothes that my mother wore when she was pregnant with me, which, by the way, come from my uncle’s brand. There were so many, it seemed endless. And they were knitted too.

PR: – It’s hard to choose, I think I would go for the clothes my mother wore in the 1980s. Her family migrated to the Philippines and they didn’t have much money, but she always loved fashion, so she copied Madonna’s clothes and had. they were made of old curtains for her and her sisters. I love these pieces because she made them.

Lucille grew up in the country and I grew up in the suburbs, so we could do whatever we could do back then.

Paolina Russo, co-founder of the brand

What advice would you give to a younger version of you?

PR: – Hear more. It’s natural when you’re doing any artistic activity to be very stubborn, and what’s more, I’m satisfied with my stubbornness to think you know better than “we’ll make it on our own,” even when everyone tells us we’re wrong. : But I think that today I listen to them, these tips, much more than when I started, and it helps me to move forward.

LG: – Go, help. I had a really hard time doing it at first. You just have to know how to ask. That is how the world is created. It is also where he finds his beauty, everyone knows how to do it, he has his specialty.

What are you going to do with the €50,000 that comes with the Zalando prize?

PR: – This money will help us maintain our quality goals. For jeans, for example, we work with a factory in Portugal that deals with big brands like Balenciaga. They are very professional, and for us, who are still a small brand, it is interesting to cooperate with such established partners, because it means that our production is secured.

LG: – We also attach great importance to stability in our projects. Zalando’s award will allow us to increase our production while ensuring that sustainability remains at the heart of how we operate, without sacrifice.