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Giulia Bonandini

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LOVE AS RELIGION

 

“Imagine all the people sharing all the world” says John Lennon. We all know this song, but now more than ever, we need to share something.

So, I want to tell a story. A story about a young designer: no seams, no cuts, no tricky fabrics. One t-shirt, only one concept: Love as religion, by Giulia Bonandini, a 24 years old designer from Turin.

How your brand was born?

When I graduated I needed to get in touch with different cultures, my travel to India was the first step to look for myself and my identity as a designer. I needed to understand the world I had chosen. Love as religion is not a brand, it’s a way of life.

Was your muslim boyfriend a problem in your project?

Yes, I started thinking about myself and him as a fusion of cultures not only as a love affair. He gave me the input to go on. Who is Giulia? What kind of life she wants?

 

So, to tranfer your concept, do you choose a T-shirt.

 

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At the beginning it was just a way to have something mine to do. T-shirt is the fastest way to communicate your idea. First of all, by opinions, surveys, interview, then I built the base, then I bought the T-shirts!

 

What has the main surprise?

Many young Muslims asked, they were curious. Sometimes people think we are opposite poles, but I named their culture that of the hug. They want to listen to you, mostly new generations. They are not marketing or trend victims, they only want to know and discover.

 

About your project. News? Tecniques?

I saw a large interest, so I realized a logo-pattern for foulards and bag (maybe). I prefer basic-product to make stronger my concept, with direct digital print.

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Choice of colors?

Black and white is a classic, natural colors instead want to be a fil-rouge of my idea. For the future I’m thinking of salmon pink, pearl, noisette, always natural colors, but with a look for the trend.

 

What was the main problem you have had in your project?

Foundrising, looking for print shops, someone able to to produce a small sample collection. It’s not easy. I’ll do the rest: photos, lookbook, social campaign, as I could, with university network.

 

I think, your message is important today. Italy, Europe, the whole world, with Covid-19 emergency, need something to believe. Fashion not like overproduction and trend, but fashion like concept and sustainability. Have you any last message about this?

 

Faith and love are similar, love as religion was born with this intent. We are all the same and we all need everyone’s help.

 

Giulia Bonandini graduated at European Insitute of Design in 2018 in Turin, is working for a fashion studio in Turin, and she is carry on with her project.

Her Mission.

 

Go and see “loveasreligion” on Instagram.

 

Benedetta Simone

 

SPLENDIDO Magazin, the Food Magazin!

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“Focus on your true strength and find a niche. Don’t do it for the fame or your ego but for the matter. Convey value, ideally timeless value. Know what you’re writing about and don’t ever be seduced to become superficial or careless because the internet is quick and trashy. Be tyrannical when it comes to detail. And then: keep posting.”

 

Splendido Magazine, why did you start?!

Mercedes is mainly a writer, Juri is mainly a photographer. But for Splendido we switch roles all the time – sometimes Mercedes is behind the camera and Juri writes, and the next day it is the other way around. We are used to working together for years now and thats because we got to know each other while working together as freelancers for newspapers and magazines. But Juri started the blog that later became Splendido on his own at first, that was in 2015. He has always been a great cook and just started writing down what he was cooking. Since Mercedes loves cooking too and we both enjoyed cooking and eating together from the moment we first met, she got envious of his blog pretty quickly and was allowed to join. Eventually we decided to focus our magazine on Italian cuisine. Not only because it is the one cooking style we prefer and always come back to. Also it is a food culture with an almost infinite amount of local traditions, recipes and specialties to explore. Plus we have an apartment in Lombardy, Northern Italy, where we live up to about six months a year and travel a lot throughout Italy to learn more about Italian food and to find great spots to eat and shop local specialties. Pretty quickly we saw the interest for the blog grow bigger and decided to professionalize it.

 

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How did you start and what kind of work/preparation behind Splendido?

After we decided to professionalize Splendido in 2017, we hired an agency to help us with the visual concept and the programming of a website that resembles no longer a blog but a profound magazine with a look and feel that fitted our needs and intentions. The new website went online in the end of 2018 and immediately it was well worth the hard work and money that went into it. The website is growing steadily since and by now it really became a job rather than being a nice hobby. We put a lot of work into the content of our website and work constantly on growing our audience. But it is still worth every minute of it, because a) we get to cook, eat and travel a lot and b) there is no better feeling in the world than being a creator and work on the behalf of your own business.

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What’s so special in it?

A lot of people tell us they love not only our photos and recipes, but especially our writing. We try to write from a very personal perspective and we don’t just give instructions on how to cook something but always tell a little back story about a recipe too. Be it some witty or funny thought about life and cooking or some interesting fact about Italian food. Also we rarely give exact quantities in a recipe but rather encourage the reader to trust his own gut and develop his own sense and intuition for tasting and quantities.

We love the Italian principle of „quanto basta“, which means: no one can tell you how much of an ingredient you really need because you have to feel and taste for yourself whether its enough salt / flour / egg for your taste and also for the circumstances you’re working in.

 

How do you get inspired?

We travel a lot, read a lot, talk to people. Especially while on the road and when eating out in restaurants or visiting farmers. One of our favorite things to do is also to go for huge walks in a city like for example Milan and look at every single restaurant menu in the streets. Thats when we always come up with new recipe ideas or simply ideas for new combinations of ingredients. But inspiration can really hit you anywhere. We just launched our fashion collection (shop.splendido-magazin.de, we also ship to Italy), and therefore we collected photographs of Italian typography in the streets which we now worked with to design T-Shirts and Caps.

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Where does your passion come from?

Good question. I guess we have both always loved food, loved Italy, loved traveling and look at the world and learn about traditions, cultures, design and daily human life in general, but also loved being artists and follow our talents in the fields of writing and photography. We have always been searching for some platform to combine all of these things in a fruitful and focused way so that it could also become an independent business and source of income for us.

 

Difficulties you had to face and goals.

The goal is definitely to grow and to be able to keep exploring Italy as well as our own capacities. We have a lot of plans for the future, our fashion collection was only the beginning.

 

Suggestions/advices to someone who wants to start a blog?

Focus on your true strength and find a niche. Don’t do it for the fame or your ego but for the matter. Convey value, ideally timeless value. Know what you’re writing about and don’t ever be seduced to become superficial or careless because the internet is quick and trashy. Be tyrannical when it comes to detail. And then: keep posting.

 

Projects for the future?

Many.

Follow Mercedes and Juri here but also in FB and Instagram

FREE MASKS FOR DALLAS

PROTESTING IN 2020? BRING A MASK

By Idara Umoh

While most of the world got ready to usher in the year 2020, the Chinese government announced that dozens of people in the city of Wuhan fell sick with a new virus. Few would have guessed what the next months would look like.

The virus was identified as a new member of the coronavirus family and was named COVID-19, and it quickly became everyone’s topic of discussion as it spread throughout the world. Unlike something most never experienced before, airlines grounded flights, travel was restricted, jobs were lost, restaurants closed and the economy took a hard nosedive. As of June 12, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) reported 7.4 million confirmed cases, and 418,294 deaths worldwide.

So how do you get COVID-19? Like the common cold or influenza, it spreads when a sick person coughs, sneezes, or speaks. The most common symptoms are fever or chills, cough, and tiredness, with some also reporting a new loss of taste and smell. With symptoms ranging from mild to severe illness, face masks and social distancing became our main means of protection while states began to issue orders to shelter-in-place.

Although COVID-19 has become one of the most significant pandemics in modern history, there has always been another epidemic quietly eating away at the United States which would soon come to the surface. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For 8 minutes and 46 seconds, George was crushed under the knee to the neck, while other officers watched, and bystanders recorded while pleading for his life. He called out for his mother, and cried out that he could not breathe, but this was not enough to make it stop. This was not the first time that an unarmed black person was brutally killed. Merely months before, Ahmaud Arbery was chased down and killed while jogging, and the list goes on: Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, and many more. But this time, something was different, something broke. Racism, the silent epidemic that had been kept quiet for centuries could no longer be ignored. From San Francisco, California to Washington D.C and even worldwide, streets filled with thousands of protesters demanding #justiceforgeorgefloyd, chanting #Blacklivesmatter and #icantbreathe.

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People of all colors and backgrounds coming together to fight against injustice was something many have never seen before, and in the midst of all the protests, the importance of social distancing and masks went to the backburner.

Right here in Dallas, we have already seen 13,585 cases, and 280 deaths, and large crowds of people shouting and singing close together with some doing this without masks, would certainly be a perfect opportunity for the virus to spread.

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We wanted to see people protesting peacefully and safely to prevent a spike in cases of COVID-19 so we began to ask for donations of face masks that we could give out during these events, and quickly, we began to get answers from various organizations, including Meetcaregivers and C. Adeola. Masks were given out during the Dallas Stand Up for Justice protest held on June 6th, more will be distributed during upcoming events, and to help our community, we will also be sharing masks with local businesses so customers without a mask can use one to shop safely.

In the midst of a pandemic, a fight for social justice has broken out throughout the United States, and we are hopeful that these efforts will bring about reform and newfound unity between all. In the words of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” We have chosen to longer be silent, but we must remember to also do it safely.

 

If you live in the Dallas area, and need a mask, please reach out to us at deshabillemagazine22@gmail.com. 

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1 How the Coronavirus Pandemic Unfolded: a Timeline. https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-timeline.html.
2 WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard. https://covid19.who.int/
3 Q&A on coronaviruses (COVID-19). https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/question-and-answers-hub/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses
4 Dallas County Coronavirus (COVID-19) Updates and Information. https://www.dallascounty.org/covid-19/

 

 

Déshabillé Magazine supports BLACK LIVES MATTER

 

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” MLK JR

2020 is an uncomfortable, challenging year. It keeps pushing us to see our failures, our weaknesses, our flaws and the true nature of what humanity has tried to hide under the carpet for too many years, even centuries. But it also a wonderful opportunity to reveal our strength and to connect with our neighbor.

It is clear like the first light of the day that the solution is in recognizing that we are part of one body, if an arm is broken, all the body will suffer. We need healing and it will come only if we consistently implement our ability of listening, understanding and taking actions for the common good for all.

Déshabillé Magazine decides to stand and support the Black Lives Matter Movement against an unbearable pandemic event like Racism. 2020 is pushing for a radical change. Will we be able to respond to this call?

We have decided to contribute to the movement in 4 ways, join us in one of these activities!

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1. THE ROCK CHURCH MARCH

Today Saturday 13th June at 12pm, if you are in New York you can join our friends from the Rock Church in a peaceful march that will remain in history.

In these last weeks, more than ever, we remember Martin Luther King Jr., his messages of equality, hope and love remain relevant today. His life demonstrated Jesus’ commandment to “love our neighbors as ourselves.”

Join The Rock Church this Saturday as they petition in prayer. NYC tri-state area will meet in Washington Sq. Park at noon. Register by clicking this LINK

“Love is one of the pinnacle parts of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice, and justice is really love in calculation.”

CHINAZA ADEOLA BLACK LIVES MATTER

2.  MASKS FOR SALVATION BY DESIGNER CHINAZA ADEOLA

The brand @c.adeola has dedicated its energy and love to saving the world one soul at a time. Believing that our duty is to use our gifts to do it, they have launched #buyamasksalvation to help those protesting to stay safe. For every purchase of a designer mask, they have donated proceeds to purchase disposable masks for the world. Their products were sold out very quickly but keep in touch with the designer for the next step!

“Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says ‘Love your enemies,’ he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition.” — “Loving Your Enemies”

DON KAKA MASKS FOR BLM

3. BAIL THEM OUT WITH DON KAKA

Don Kaka is a talented designer who has just released his new collection called ‘Darkest Summer in LA’. The name of the collection started off as a reference to the dramatic situation around the world, from the coronavirus pandemic until the tragic news of George Floyd’s death, and the escalation of protests that seized America.

In his own words: “I had no idea things would get even darker since then. I want to help however I can so I decided it would be best to donate all the profits of this collection to Black Lives Matter & protester bailout funds”. His reusable masks are made of thick dual folded woven material, 2 layer interior filter and a double elastic band.”

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”MLK Jr

4. PROTECT THE COMMUNITY

Déshabillé Magazine team is based in Europe, Asia and US. Having this opportunity we have decided to call for masks donation in order to distribute it out to the protesters and the community.

Our thanks goes to Mrs. Florence Furaha, CEO of MeetCaregivers who donated us a generous amount of masks from Boston that we will distribute to the Dallas County community during the protests. If you are in Dallas and in need of mask, please get in touch with us, write us here: deshabillemagazine22@gmail.com

You could also sign all the petitions you find online if you are not in the States; your voice and your support is important and it will lead to a change. Don’t underestimate how much you count.

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?” MLK Jr

 

 

 

PERCHE’ NO Jewels

Galleria

 “If you can dream it you can do it.” W. Disney

 

Beginning.

 

Silvia Tagliasacchi: I am the third child of a Bolognese family. Like all the youngest of a family, I perhaps had the role too of breaking family patterns. Or at least to strongly question them! This has made my first 30 years of life tiring and beautiful together.

The idea of ​​creating jewelry dates back to 15 years ago. But I never would have imagined to take it seriously and work on it to create jewelry lines, with an accurate style and a studied concept.

I had a wonderful trip to Thailand and by chance… Can you believe it… I found a flyer advertising about a goldsmith course for tourists. It all took place at a teacher’s home, every afternoon for a week.

It was a beautiful experience.

I immediately fell in love with all those unusual work tools and the art of governing fire so precisely that I could melt and weld metals. In short, it was so engaging that the return backpack contained at least 10 kg of equipment, including a goldsmith’s column drill!

Years later I created my brand with a very unusual name. A name that comes exactly from the question “Why not? (PERCHE’ NO)” I question myself at a time in life that required a job and existential change. I thought that the question represented exactly what I wanted to become: “PERCHE’ NO (Why not)… Can’t it be done? Why can’t I call into question the choices of my first 40 years of life? Why can’t I bet on myself? Why can’t I think of working while having fun or… In a almost subversive way… Having fun working? Feeling that I didn’t have a real answer to this question, that there was no reason why I couldn’t really change my life, this opened up truly unexpected horizons.

 

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What’s so special in your work?

 

I make modular and reversible jewels.

I play with shapes and colors in order to have a single piece that can be transformed, to give more wearability. I make them by hand using metals and goldsmith’s techniques, along with oriental papers -worked and aged- to make them part of the metal. But I don’t think that the peculiarity of my works lies in the technique. Rather, it is the message they carry: you can change. I am convinced that our form (of human beings) has infinite mutation possibilities. We are born with the gift of transformation and we can reach this freedom. Even that of becoming asymmetric. Beauty is in the creativity of opening ourselves to transformation. Seeing that things can take other shapes or colors. And maybe at first glance you hadn’t even noticed. Here it is. To adorn yourself with something that reminds us of this amazing ability… All-female… It seemed beautiful to me.

Where does your passion come from?

 

I have always loved working with my hands, to create using my imagination. Houses, shelters, tools… anything. Then I fell in love with some materials and explored them with the adolescence inexperience and the tenacity of the self- taught. By force or luck I have always been an experimenter. My training and my studies, for the most disparate reasons, have always been the most distant from the artistic/artisan field. By force of things, I am mainly self-taught and thanks to continuous experimentation I could always learn more: hours and hours of creative errors and instructive frustrations.

I think working with my hands is a need, as well as a passion.

It relaxes me, opens my mind to a constant changing perspectives job. Sometimes tiring, sometimes enthusiastically.

Difficulties.

 

The biggest difficulty was certainly changing my career path and starting to do what I wanted: using my imagination and my hands. It was a choice I made when I already had a family and children and when common sense said that I had to move towards to a safe job and salary. This decision required a great deal of courage and confidence in my abilities and in life. After taking this leap into the dark, everything developed with great fluidity. Which does not mean without problems and difficulties, but always accompanied by solutions and possibilities.

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Your goals.

 

For the moment, the biggest goal is to live off my work. It is about waking up every morning without the effort of having to go to work. It is the feeling to be a free and lucky woman.

 

Suggestions to someone who wants to start a business!

 

Well… Go headlong, choose good masters and allies, and never stop being curious.

Future.

 

Traveling, traveling traveling. A training trip to learn craft and artistic techniques, scattered around the globe. An unhurried journey, to fill my eyes with beauty… Then I find myself fantasizing about international fairs and building an online sales network.

FB

Instagram

 

 

Donatella

TILDE&FLOR

Galleria

“Wallpaper is a fantastic, infinite, wonderful, fascinating world. There are so many types of wallpaper. The one I use for my products, especially for bags, is the thicker vinyl wallpaper, more resistant especially to humidity and water.”

 

The Story

Arianna Cappellini was born in a small town, near the Tuscan city of Pistoia. Their parents who wanted to redeem themselves from a state of simplicity and poverty. Two “lions” she said, two ambitious, united and fighting people. Their determination brought to the birth of a company producing sofas and armchairs, which slowly, in the 70s, led them to reach a status quo since always desidered. Both passed away between 2019 and 2020, leaving a deep void behind, and a great legacy: the desire to do something, to create something for themselves.

“I started working on my project, after almost 20 years work as a styling-artbuyer, in short as the one who works alongside the photographer for the creation of photographic images for various sales catalogs, for furniture field customers. It was and it is a fun and very, very creative job. It is about recreating small or large environments around the object, protagonist of the scene, researching the decorative elements called “props”. I had to go for shops, for warehouses, for companies, always looking for the right object to create the right atmosphere. Often it happened to me to also design the entire catalog and the various photo shots.

Around 2018, I felt the need to “do” something for me. During my styling activity, I often used wallpaper, as a decoration, for walls that created the set. It also happened to buy an object made of this material. I was struck by the fact that it was an object of daily use, made with a material that was not really born to be handled, but that was born to be fixed to a wall, and to remain there for the time that is deemed necessary. In 2018, therefore, following this push of “doing something” for me, I started creating small objects: ornamental decorations, earrings, necklaces. But the main goal was to create a special bag, one “adorned” and precious, for women.

Tilde & Flor was born just like this, an entirely fantasy name, female, as well as the name of my bags, all name of artists, singers, painters…”

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Material

Wallpaper is a fantastic, infinite, wonderful, fascinating world. There are so many types of wallpaper. The one I use for my products, especially for bags, is the thicker vinyl wallpaper, more resistant especially to humidity and water. The bags are made according to my project and sewn by an artisan company in the field of leather goods, so they are built like all the bags currently on the market. Reinforced and lined and with decorative elements, ranging from bamboo handle, to resin chain, which becomes a handle. Fabrics like linings also recovered from leftover or waste material. Furthermore every bag is cruelty free.

The gem is that each bag has to be a unique piece, above all because each bag it is made with sheets of wallpaper, recovered from the sales catalogs, abandoned by the manufacturing companies, which I started to recover, in the trimmings shops.

What’s so special?

My creations are all unique pieces, there is no piece like the other. They are original, in the form and details, because of the material that dresses them. The project foresees the reuse of the material that comes from the disused catalogs, and therefore they are bags that follow a civic sense in reusing material that would be thrown away.

Furthermore, and not least, they are light, and we -women- know how annoying heavy bags are, which are then filled up to become very heavy objects.

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Passion

My passion comes from wanting to test myself, from wanting to create something beautiful that came from my ideas, my creativity, and the desire to redeem the great work done by my parents, as a small businesswoman.

Difficulties

The difficulties are always around the corner… The biggest difficulty for me is the production. Mine is very very limited precisely because they are all unique pieces and because Tilde&Flor was born and still has to make itself known. The production I said, is and has been a big obstacle, both for the manpower and for the costs. Now I hope to have met the artisan company that has decided to marry my project. I’m happy.

Goals

Expand the sales network. And above all to pass the concept, that the wallpaper bag is not a bag that is ruined precisely because of paper, but it can be a bag like the others with its strengths and weaknesses. It is also a unique and special object and never the same.

 

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My advice

Never give up, have courage, believe in your own ideas, and above all jump into adventure with one foot anchored to the ground, however 🙂

For now I look at the present, with an eye to the future.

Mantra

RIUSE, RICYCLE

 

Nico’s version

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Nico and I we know each other since 5 years already, and I still remember the first time we were talking on my terrace, drinking a glass of wine, the moment I thought that I needed to tell his story. He is the typical artist, the way we all imagine a creative mind: brilliant, fleeting, changing and enthusiastic about everything and every proposals!
Since then he climbed the ladder, but always being humble, passionate and curious.

 

 

Who is Nico?!

 

I grow up in Tuscany on a hill in the middle of nowhere. It was, and still is an oasis of freedom and inspiration. Surrounded by nature, as a child I helped often my dad to do agricultural activities such cutting grass or doing fire wood. This was my first contact with machines like the chainsaw. As I grew older, I started using it for carving sculptures. A lot of space, no neighbors, no noise restrictions, it was the perfect playground for me to learn as autodidact wood sculpture. When I was 17 years old I did my first sculpture, without model, protection and without a plan what a possible outcome could be.

This was the starting point of my career as sculptor.

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When did you start to sculpt?

 

When I was a child I always wanted to become a midwife. I do not know how this idea went into my mind, but it was so strong that I started to look for an internship in that field as I was 16 years old. The idea of giving birth to something always inspired me. At the time (nowadays I do not know how it is) this type of profession was reserved for women. Looking back at this time I think that I always had in me the unconscious desire to create something or at least to assist to giving birth to something. In the context of making sculptures I realized that it was more important to me to create something, instead of only assisting to give birth.

I decided to move to London in 2016, as I got a place at the Royal College of Arts. I always wanted to study product design.

 

HNM_sculptures__0078 2What’s so special in your works?

I am not so sure. I think that they are quite unique as I never do research before starting a new project. I do not know if something like that exists already; I also do not know where my work is going to take me.

In other words I often start with a material or a process without knowing what the outcome come will be.

 

 

 

 

 

scaffali025Where does your passion come from?

I think the most important thing about my work is that I enjoy doing what I am doing. I do not think that much about it… I just start somewhere, without knowing exactly where I am going to end. This is the reason why the first and last step in producing my sculptures is the making aspect. I do not sketch that much and I prefer not to model what am doing.

 

 

 

 

 

Your mantra? 

Start doing instead of thinking!

When you start a project, do it with love and follow your passion and choose your project topic in base of what you enjoy doing.

 

Soon the new website!

Instagram

 

 

SILVIA TOFFANIN

Galleria

It was love at the first sight with Silvia! Perhaps because of her energy, or her genuine and contagious smile with whom she welcomed me when we met the first time. I believe I would like everything made of her just because of her and the way she moves in the space around itself, because it seems she does it lightly and cheerfully.

Silvia was born in Padua, a quiet city near Venice, in the north of Italy. She was a cheerful, active, diligent school girl, but very talkative 🙂

She is now living in China after 13 years spent in Milan, where she is now running her Footwear Design Consultancy Studio, BLACKZEROstudios, based in Milan and Shenzhen.


Why China? It happened by chance, but she discovers a completely different way to work and to make business: in China everything moves fast, people are very dynamic and love to risk.

The Made in Italy is unique but Chinese people are unbeatable in business.

Dreams

I started dancing at 5, so obviously the first dream was to become a dancer, then in middle school suddenly, after seeing Apollo 13, I began to dream of being an astronaut… later an airplane pilot! My childhood was serene and happy: afternoons after kindergarten and in summer, when my parents had to work, I spent time with my maternal grandparents. Grandma is a seamstress, I always saw her with needle and thread in her hands, so I spent the whole afternoons playing and messing with fabric remnants and copying clothes. Since then I noticed that my interest in fashion increased and when I was 8/9 years old they gave me one sewing machine toy for my birthday.

The Beginning

Since adolescence, with the help of grandma, we created a lot of clothes or customized what I bought or what I already had, adding particularity and originality to the pieces I wore. At the end of the High School, where I studied languages, time has come to make a decision how to continue my studies.

To everyone’s amazement I decided to study fashion. Fashion was far away from my previous studies and from my personal style at that time. Indeed in that moment, I was not a Fashionista in the literal sense. I was a little rebel: creative, eccentric, thinking out of the box, with a great passion for streetstyle and couture, always researching new mixes of fabrics, colours and shapes. That’s why I thought my creative energy could perfectly find application in the charming world of Fashion.

My family initially disagreed, but eventually we found a solution and I left for Milan. 5 years at the Politecnico of Milan, a thousand adventures, ideas, projects, experiences.

Even before finishing my master’s degree I started working for a Footwear Design Studio. Thanks to a university course I have known Marco and Guillaume and their brand Guillaume Hinfray, like this I sent them an email asking for an internship and so I started. Beside my grandmother, surely they are the people who inspired me to take this path and thanks to whom I turned my passion into my work.

From there everything began!

 Work

(2009) I stayed with Marco and Guillaume 6 years long and then moved on to the freelance business collaborating with other studios and brands.

Less than one year ago, in 2019 I started my project Studio Blackzerostudios_Milano: after so many years drawing shoes, in September I got the chance to participate at the London Fashion Week with a capsule of clothing. I took the opportunity on the fly: this is how my first clothing collection was born.

Future Projects

And now here I am, I continue with the same passion and love for fashion I have many projects in the drawer that I hope to realize soon! These days I’m working on a new important personal project. It’s a “secret dream” I’ve been keeping in my heart and now I think it’s the right moment to start.

I can’t reveal more details, so… stay tuned, news are coming!…

 

Photo credits by Ph. Elisabetta Brian @elisabetta_brian
Model: Francesca Interlenghi @the_dummys_tales
Location: Galleria Raffaella Cortese @galleriaraffaellacortese
Exhibition: Unrequited love by Monica Bonvicini

 

OLIVOCRACY

Galleria

“The big love we have for both Italy and the UK shaped our biggest dream and gave us the motivation to turn it into reality: offer our British friends the possibility to taste the real Italian excellences at home and experience Italy like a local on a holiday to remember.”

 

Daniele & Eleonora grew up in a small city in the centre of Italy, in an area called Umbria, well known for its peculiar medieval hamlets, its hilly landscape covered by vineyards and olive groves and its delicious food. A place away from the buzz of the big cities where you can savour the pleasures of a slow paced lifestyle and experience a deep connection to nature and tradition.
They have known each other forever but then they met again in London 10 years ago, where Daniele had moved for work and Eleonora was on holiday… “And here we are! The big love we have for both Italy and the UK shaped our biggest dream and gave us the motivation to turn it into reality: offer our British friends the possibility to taste the real Italian excellences at home and experience Italy like a local on a holiday to remember.”

When did you start the Olivocracy project?
We started Olivocracy four years ago, with a range of organic and biodynamic single estate extra virgin olive oils from Italian small producers and then we added Magna Mater, a range of biodynamic condiments: balsamic vinegars, apple cider vinegar, white condiment and Saba that is cooked grape must. Single estate in most cases or single origin. Mostly, pillars of traditional Italian cuisine.
We work with organic and biodynamic small to medium scale producers as they are more connected to the agronomic heritage and the rhythm of mother Nature. Two of our extra virgin olive oils come from a FAO GIAHS, a Globally Important Agronomic Heritage System, “outstanding landscapes of aesthetic beauty that combine agricultural biodiversity, resilient ecosystem and a valuable cultural heritage”.
For us there cannot be excellence without sustainability, for two main reasons: first, we believe that in a product that is considered excellent there should be no undesired substances. Second and not less important, one of the points that make a product excellent, together with an amazing sensory and chemical profile, is the impact it has on the environment.

We believe that farming can have a positive impact on the environment if farmers work in harmony with Nature, nurture biodiversity and prioritize revitalization of the soil.
We support short supply chain and maximum traceability, products straight from the farm to our customers, certified, tested in a lab and with no additives whatsoever.

Where does your passion come from?
A few factors came together: our love for Italy and London, our deep connection to nature and to tradition, a strong will to stand up for more environmentally friendly practices and a passion for discovering niche, outstanding products. We love networking, we love collaborating with like-minded people, we love waking up in the morning with a sense of scope and feeling that we are part of a constantly growing movement of people thinking and acting differently.

Difficulties.
Doing everything by ourselves, learning things we had never done before and not all listed in the famous 20% of the Pareto Principle :D, starting a business without external funds, a highly competitive market, make audience understand the real value of our products, the fact that we pay the producers more than fairly and how much this affects the final price.
However, every difficult step, led us here and we are learning a lot about business, our sector and about ourselves, as individuals, as professionals and as a couple working together. It just feels great and all this resonates so much with what we are and our values that even in the most challenging days, we know where we want to go and who we want to be.

Your goals.
Our goal is doing something we love which makes us grow as both professionals and individuals while having a positive impact on the society. Offering people the option of shopping with an eye (or both) to the environment, to their health and to real quality. Keep on learning, evolving and expanding. Having a great work-life balance and a job that is also a passion that fulfills us and gives us energy to invest with people we love. Stay present to ourselves and in connection with nature.

Be the best version of ourselves and a source of good energy for people we meet!

Advices to someone who wants to start a business.
Find out what your mission and your core values are and live accordingly. Everything will be much easier and enjoyable. Be humble and see a teacher in everyone and every situation, but at the same time be self-confident and trust your ability to do well what you already know and to learn what you don’t. Network with genuine interest with like-minded people and welcome debate. Keep on learning, reading, watching videos, listening to people, feeding your brain and soul. Try not to let the business take over your personal life, find time for yourself, meditate, exercise, do yoga or whatever you like to take care of yourself and stay healthy. Find time for your loved ones, love and life are a great source of energy and inspiration.

Projects for the future.
At some point, we would love to be flexible between London and Italy, so to have more time to enjoy our families and the Mediterranean weather that we love so much! Widen the range of products and the circle of people we collaborate with. Create more and more synergies with other sectors of sustainable manufacture. Work on connected projects. Being able to delegate and allocate our working time to that aforementioned 20% of things that we really love doing.

Our mantra
Be the change you want to see in the world.
We don’t inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
Keep calm… and call Batman!

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Donatella

ATELIER HAAS

Galleria

The Road is Devendra

 

A conversation with young clothing designer Lisa Haas, 27 years old and currently based in Munich, who wants to bring back the awareness to the original hand craft and loves to create common projects as the above video. 

 

When did you start with fashion and why?

There was no clear starting point but I always felt drawn to creating things with my hands. That started at a very early age – drawing, paper crafting, crocheting… and never stopped to this day.

It happened naturally that I ended up in this field.

The passion about creating and realising your own ideas from a picture in your head until it comes alive in reality is what keeps me going. During my teenage years I started to teach myself how to sew. This resulted in designing and sewing my own graduation dress for school, although back then, I didn’t have much experience with pattern cutting. There was just this strong wish and belief to get this red dress done. And with a little help it worked out in the end.

Looking at that dress now makes me smile… but we all start somewhere. This is important.
Then things moved on from there. I did my first internship in my hometown and had the chance to do another one at Puma in London, to find out whether my wish to study fashion design after those experiences would prevail. It did.
I started with fashion because I truly love the handcraft. The ability of creating things by yourself and experiencing the whole development, every step, from start to finish causes a deep connection to what you are doing. That is a wonderful process and feeling to me. Expanding the knowledge on your craftsmanship in order to prevent it from dying out feels even more important nowadays. Actually, I prefer to say clothing design instead of fashion design, because to me that adds value to it.

Dreams.

One of my biggest dreams is to go abroad again to work with an international team in an interdisciplinary studio. The exchange between people within a team and the common work on a project towards the same goal makes me feel the special energy coming alive. Also this environment doesn’t need to be within fashion only. It is about creating the network.
At the moment, I am enticed by the opportunities of clothing design of work wear for restaurants, hotels, etc. You create clothing for real people who work there. Still, there is a minimalist and timeless design approach customized for each client, with the goal of making the uniforms personalised for every employee.
Another dream is to work as a costume designer for dance companies and music artists. I have a strong connection and love for dance, as I’ve been dancing myself for years. Here, creating clothing comes again with different challenges, this time combining customisation for each dancer while allowing optimal performance, i.e. movement.

My goal is to spread my enthusiasm with my fellow workers through the work and projects as well as the time we share together. Basically, contributing to the creative field with my work while also being able to gather people to learn and create together and thereby giving something back.

What to do to pursue goals?

Right now, I am focussing on connecting with people it would be great to work for and with. I am always open to collaborations. Currently, it feels like a transition phase. Simultaneously, I’m creating ideas and realizing outfit projects I have had in mind for a long time. I’m also working with people within the network I built up here in Munich.

time(is)less_LisaHaas_6_by IsabellaHager-mintime(is)less_LisaHaas_3_by IsabellaHager-min

Inspiration.

Stories around people and feelings that certain situations create inspire me most. This method is also how I approached my graduation collection “Time(is)less”. The concept is about the perception of time nowadays with regard to deceleration. Keywords are, amongst other things, protection and restriction. This resulted in creating some kind of ‘armour’ protecting you as a second layer. At the same time, this piece might narrow your own field of action because you wear it on top and it is not always possible to put it on fully by yourself. To me, this is a way of translating feelings into clothing. What does the wearer feel? It is my main question when creating.
Colours and textures are a source of inspiration too. Often, the fabrics are there before I really know what it is going to be. It is interesting, as sometimes the fabric just ‘tells’ what it should become. When there is a certain colour combination that attracts me, my eyes begin to sparkle. No matter where I find it… in the streets, in the landscape, in rooms, in pictures. I take photographs, sometimes some notes as well and come back to it when needed. Over time, this has resulted in some kind of photo library, a personal collection of inspiration.
Talking about this leads to another form of art that I enjoy: collages. With small cut out pictures from an existing world another new world is created. For this, I am randomly collecting newspapers and magazines to look for interesting images I can use any time later on.

Motivation.

I remind myself why I started this in the first place. It is sewing. It is gaining knowledge about the handcraft and learning within the field of aesthetics. Being capable of performing a certain task. I am also happy to spread my knowledge.
Obviously, you might reach a point in life where you rethink what you are doing right then. At that time, it may seem difficult but this hardship may bring a lot of (hidden) opportunities with it. You need to keep going, trust in yourself and listen to that inner voice. Even if the next chapter you are about to embark on isn’t clear yet.
Also, I try to reach out to other disciplines. A huge passion of mine is cycling with my racing bike. Long distance trips or climbs in the mountains always help me clear my mind and I return re-energised for new projects.

Difficulties.

What is the purpose of fashion nowadays? If you can speak of purpose… In which way do we need to produce today? These questions became more and more present over the years since the beginning of my studies.
For me, it starts with raising the perception and value of clothing in society again. There needs to be an awareness of how long it actually takes to realize a single garment, how much work and time is invested, in order to prevent it from being thrown away carelessly. The value of clothing has decreased over the years, but I also think it is slowly increasing again. We need to shift our minds and attitudes towards the worth of clothing.

My personal style is minimalistic and reduced with some details you only notice with a second, closer look. Taking inspiration from menswear and combining it with feminine shapes shows the interaction of contrasts, which I am fond of.

Even though it’s been a couple of years since I created ‘Time(is)less‘, it is still relevant today – how are we using our time nowadays and how is it influenced by society and the system’s rules?

To carry on this thought I came back to creating a timeless wardrobe representing yourself, as I still believe that clothing is a protection for yourself and your personality, that can make you feel comfortable – because unfitted, impersonalised clothing can achieve quite the opposite. Through defining your personality and the clear vision of what you want to wear in order to feel being yourself automatically leads to buying less but selected garments of good quality that have a long term space in your wardrobe. This is what I am focusing on in my work right now. Another challenge is to only make use of all the fabrics I collected over the years.

There is a love to create an outfit for someone, be it a wedding outfit and concert outfit for a cellist. My wish is to allow people to feel like themselves when wearing their outfit, it encourages them in what they are doing because it fits perfectly and underlines their personality.

My take on these issues and the future of clothing design:

Be aware of what you have and use what is already there. I believe that personalised clothing, i.e. especially made for someone, will increase its value to the owner. The awareness of how long it actually takes to create a garment needs to be transparent to consumers again to avoid the cycle of buying cheap clothes just like that and throwing them away uncaringly as soon as there is the slightest damage that could easily be fixed by someone with the most basic knowledge of sewing. To me there is magic in repairing things. Not only clothing. It shows that you care about them. Hence, I want to share not only that magical feeling with others but also give them a means of achieving this by sharing my knowledge and experience in the field.

VIDEOS – Styling by Atelier Haas

“The Road is Devendra”
“Amy Ayanda – Visitors”

Photo credits by Isabella Hager, Manuel Nieberle, Simon Freund, Lisa Haas

Atelier Haas

Donatella