Welsh designer Paolo Carzana showed up on my radar last year. He is a newer designer but has already amassed some clout: he is a recipient of the British Fashion Council NewGen award and has BFC support money to put on shows, and is also an artist in residence at the Sarabande Foundation, the arts foundation supported at the bequest of Lee Alexander McQueen.
His vision is fairly singular, much like McQueen. While promoting his Fall Winter '23 collection entitled "Queer Symphony," he said, "It’s mainly related to this idea that everything I was ashamed of as a kid is now my strength. Up until I was 17, I would literally pray every night to wake up straight, and pray to be normal. And every single day, I was bullied in school, when I didn’t even know who I was."
It is a shared story among many of us in the gay community, one I have heard many times...surviving emotional, psychological, and often physical abuse and attacks to emerge on the other side, despite or probably because of it all, with a hunger and drive to create something beautiful, to express a force that could not be taken from us. I can attest to the truth of this from my own personal experience. So I feel great tenderness toward and interest in the creations of Paolo Carzana.
His sartorial vernacular is made of delicate fabrics tied and stitched together that seem like creations from some dream world, as if those wearing his garments should be lounging around on marble terraces in bright Pre-Raphaelite splendor, or in a lush production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The cuts feel like they are memories of historical clothing, like tattered remnants of a far-away homeland after a shipwreck, and his beautiful sheer, ripped, ruched tops and trousers seem like they belong on wood sprites, elves, fairies. There is a hushed beauty to the silhouettes and construction of the garments that casts a spell.
So for this SS '25 collection at London Fashion Week, whimsically entitled "How To Attract Mosquitoes," he showed his wonderful creations not on a catwalk at a flashy location but in his own back garden at his home in Hackney. He told British Vogue, "I feel it’s completely away from what is [typically] considered a fashion show. I’m not interested in influencers; I’m not interested in any of that. I [want] to offer a much more sentimental experience that isn’t about smoke and mirrors." Speaking to the collection's narrative, he said, "[Last season’s collection] was loosely set in heaven; this one [sees us] going to hell. It feels as if we have gone back to a really strong sense of vanity and not caring for others, not caring for the Earth, caring [only] for ourselves." The antidote he presents is the opposite of fast fashion, the opposite of glitz and bling for its own sake.
The cherry on the cake of his brand is his earnest commitment to sustainability. He uses deadstock or recycled fabric, and he uses plant dyes and spices to color his fabrics, including black walnut, Himalayan rhubarb, wild cherry bark, turmeric, tea, hibiscus, and apple wood. With that, it is so fitting that these lovely, enchanted garments were presented in such a bosky setting...
https://www.paolocarzana.com/
