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Eco-fashion-designer of Italian-Austrian origin, Agostina Zwilling is an artist who investigates processes, scenarios, methodologies and best practices in design.

Using the nunofelt technique, she creates works ranging from interior design (fibre walls, paintings, carpets, tapestries etc.) to clothing.

Shapes and colours are moulded by hand, through a slow process that goes from massaging silk, wool, cashmere, linen, hemp, beech, etc., to choosing the plants, flowers and roots that make up the chromatic bases.

Each garment is a unique work, an actual size development is impossible, because the finishes become unrepeatable and the manipulation generates new nuances and details each time. Even the idea of a definitively finished work is inconceivable. The fibres move, change with time, depending on the wearer’s use and silhouette.

Nunofelt is dynamic by nature and, in Zwilling’s work, lends itself to a correspondence with the concept of the ‘open work’, understood as an artwork.

whose aesthetic, formal or material identity is not defined once and for all, but is subject to factors of variability that make it, to a greater or lesser extent, always different. (Cit. Umberto Eco)

But it is also open in its possibility of being interpreted in ways that vary according to the sensitivity and emotions of those who encounter it.

Zwilling’s is not a clothing line, but represents a true philosophy of life that aggregates and connects training, creativity, sustainable supply chains, ethical and aesthetic awareness, according to an idea that weaving is a gesture that intersects human and social networks with the final product, without interruptions, as a responsible and circular action, in harmonious and conscious tension within a flow that smacks of art, anthropology, ecology, and in general of culture and beauty.

On the ivomilan.com you can discover the Zwilling private collection for autumn/winter 2023-24.

Agostina Zwilling is the founder of the Italian Felt Academy. The school is located in Verona town, Italy. For more information and contacts, you can visit the Italianfeltacademy.it

Below, a photographic tour in the experimental processes that characterize the work of the designer (the material is provided by Zwilling herself and all rights are reserved)

Agostina Zwilling eco felt designer by vocation.

Her world does not contemplate needles and scissors. Agostina does not sew: she unites. Agostina does not produce: she creates.

Her world does not contemplate needles and scissors. It winds and unwinds around a thread that is not just raw material, but also a relationship.It is the thread that ties different sensibilities, perceptions and intuitions together, making them into one story bursting with many differences. It is the experience of a common “feeling”. Agostina does not sew: she unites. Agostina does not produce: she creates. She loves to put together what has been damaged. Soothing, warming, wrapping. Even a tear is useful to her purpose: it is breaking the rule, the subversion of order in favour not of dis-order, but of Harmony. Her prime preoccupation (which we can identify with) is to propose a new “perception” of the world.

Agostina Zwilling, a felt-fashion-artist committed to spreading the ancient art of felt making in modern couture, is the founder of the Italian Felt Academy. The school was situated in Verona, Italy. For more information, visit  www.italianfeltacademy.it

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We don’t have half-seasons anymore!

This popular saying has never been as real and true to its meaning. After two months of torrential rainfalls and winter temperatures, suddenly, summer is here.

During this period, it’s hard to choose what to wear, not to feel cold or suffer from the heat throughout the day. Incidentally, due to the difficulty of finding raw materials, the deliveries of the goods were delayed, which made the selection of the stores inconsistent and incoherent with the weights of the fabrics suitable during this season. Even making our catalog took a long time because we had to wait for the seasonal selection to arrive.

Now that we’ve finally finished this task, we can offer original combinations: the periodical Mix-and-Match, where we combine the garments on our catalog in fresh and alternative ways.

Here we are with Lucia, our model, outside of the static frame of our website, on the streets of Padua, near our store, combining garments and brands to discover new dimensions, chromatic palettes, and adaptability to contexts and formal or informal situations.

Noir Kei Ninomiya realized this skirt with the typical formal exuberance of the Japanese school. Its central theme is not the feminine silhouette but its narrative potential, which reveals multiple interpretations: from the pronounced femininity with the tapered gilet in washed linen and the fitted tube top in elastic silk froissé by Marc Le Bihan

… to a more relaxed everyday expression with the oversized sweater by Album di Famiglia

… or a sophisticated and uncommon ensemble with the sartorial jacket, hand finished, in linen and cotton gauze by Archivio JM Ribot.

With a different gaze, we can match this blueish gilet/shirt in washed linen by Forme d’Expression with this wide trousers in tubular knit made of linen and cotton by Archivio JM Ribot.

Ultimately we close this first June Mix and Match with a made-in-Italy outfit with this paint−like silk jacket printed bt the historic company Fissore, the neutral colors of the sage shirt by Album di Famiglia and the skirt made of a light linen, cashmere, and silk knit by Boboutic.

The bags are made in Italy by Amine and Numero 10, while the shoes are the Marisa’s by Trippen for Ivo Milan.

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The first change of temperatures allows us to finally experience the autumn season even outside of the online dimension ‘catalogue‘ and of the daily spaces of the store.

Now you can place the garments within the colors and atmospheres of the period, imagining them in their potential and transversal recombinations. Our tutor Sari, on a Sunday in November, leads us into passionate mix and match where you can discover, from new perspectives, different items of the seasonal assortment.

The fantastic Italian cashmere F-Cashmere – i.e. Fissore, historic brand of the most noble yarn – with different color blocks and surprisingly soft hand, accompanies a wide, rustic skirt in English Donegal by Ricorrrobe, Anglo-Japanese new-entry. They close the ensemble: a knitted hat made of acrylic, nylon and mohair by Chisaki – directly from Japan – and one of the nap Lak leather bags of the cheerful South Tyrolean Maison, Zilla.

 

And one more, the interpretation of Noir – Kei Ninomiya collection, the most classic winter, eternal heavy knit with braids and Lapp workmanship in a piece of more feminine portability, thanks to a wide development of the sleeves, of a complex high neck/hood and ideal proportions for voluminous skirts, such as that in waxed cotton tartan always proposed by Ricorrrobe. A cool polar hat, all moldable and the revisitation of the typical historical aviator jacket, squeezed and resumed with daring tailoring seams, by Junya Watanabe, celebrate a coming winter of international evocative recognizability.

To close our appointment, a mix and match that mixes together a unique piece of the Nuno-felt designer by Emanuela Rovida, in organic merino wool and silk, handmade and fused with painterly skills from natural colors of shrubs and territorial plants, completely reversible and wearable front and back, seamless, combined with a skirt by Marc Le Bihan, from the refined fabric of gauze and boiled wool, worked together with three-dimensional bubbles. To cover the exceptional quality of the garments, a Forme d’Expression coat with a daily taste, comfortable, in a mélange jersey with a vibrant and intense blue, reverberated by the dazzling glitter of a metallic leather briefcase.

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How many times in the shop has an occasional and distracted adventurer started with this exclamation: “Oh, yes, Issey Miyake, the perfumes one!“.

An expression that, in all its naive purity, revealed the striking distance between our work as promoters and popularizers of the so-called Japanese school and the public actually reached in the city. Maybe it also happened simultaneously with one of the many windows focused on a futuristic garment by Issey Miyake. Each time, that sound confirms the long way still to go and the burning frustration of being misunderstood. Without triggering a competition between the world of perfumes and that of clothes, even those who are not in the trade know how much his story belonged to the latter, with perfume being a typical gadget of the most established designers.

Yet not in Padova.

Bringing Issey Miyake to the city 24 years ago, when the brand still did not have a generalized fame and his perfume did not yet exist, did not create status, but only circulated within evolved global niches. This meant an important acceleration towards complexity and an indisputable recognition to the shop. First of all, in order to present it, the space had to have the aesthetic ‘requisites’ compatible with the strict philosophy of the Maison, whose concern for the future, rather than sales and the diffusion of the brand, was aimed at the defense of its cultural prestige. The staff of the Parisian showroom came personally to make sure everything was set and then gave us the green light that the collaboration between Ivo Milan and the company could begin in 1998.

And it was immediatly a great love what would become a long adventure; a challenge on the edge of the most heated creative tension, interrupted only by the closure of the store in 2020 (at the time we could not imagine being able to reopen) and by the inevitable advance of other local competitors…

It is useless to dwell on the unmpteenth narrative around the work of Issey Miyake because there are more expert pens than us that have written and are writing about it. In our own small way, we have had more opportunities to present the brand in its different lines (Pleats Please, BaoBao, Issey Miyake-Fête, A-Poc, 132. 5, Cauliflower) and the satellite ones of the group (Haat, A-net with Final Home, Plantation and Zucca). Since we have worked with all of them for a long time, we wanted to put a particular focus on the one that bears his name, offering it in its most daring, free and joyful expressions. We believe that bringing witness to this propulsive collaboration is the least we can do to the many people who, spontaneously, in these days, have contacted us to thank us for allowing them the opportunity to be so close to the best of Issey Miyake.

An overview of photos, articles, videos (many on our youtube channel) about this long journey together, with all the gratitude to the poetry that it has brought to our work… Thank you!


 

 

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Daniela Gregis FW 2021-2022

It’s all hand finished!

That’s what said one of the more expert tailors of the city while caressing with great care the endless length of the rim to be adjusted, bottom part of a cashmere coat so soft to the touch that fully captured her skilled sensitivity.

 

Even if Marta is pretty used to our ‘never-seen items’, with some pride I’ll say her: ‘Yes, it’s a Daniela Gregis’ coat, she works like that!

 

Actually it’s not usual for the items of the designer from Bergamo to arrive to the tailor’s shop. Fit and proportions are so comfortable that they never need adjustments, and instead of removing even a single inch from her precious fabrics, it’s more usual to use the eyelets applied to the sides to fix a rim, and adjust the length with new creativity.

But that ice melange coat could not risk to be stepped on up and down the bridges in Venice, during the morning runs, or just put on the shoulder during the daily working routine of its lucky owner.

Daniela Gregis’ items have an amazing peculiarity: you can wear them, even considering their precious compositions, in everyday life.

When you’re in a hurry or when you’re fully distracted, they will never embarrass you! They’re interchangeable, they can be worn inside out, back to front or, for coats in general, even upside down. This is due to their construction which is designed from the very beginning, with patterns and fabrics, doubled or alternate, changing according to how they are worn. Thanks to all accurate and full finishing, Gregis’ clothes still keep a constant balance in all solutions, even the most unexpected.

Daniela Gregis FW 2021-2022

In an apparently joyful attitude, her last collection, called Tintinba – evocative onomatopoeic sound of fragile instruments which, when in contact, can change into elementary and casual melodies – the Gregis’ creations offer infinite hypotheses and chromatic proposals, in fabrics and shapes, not sketched at all.

 

Harmonies can be composed with a unique complicity between colour themes and its best material creation: velvet, cashmere, silk, cotton, gauze, and so on. Each fibre assumes a pictorial and expressive responsibility becoming the interpreter of dominant seasonal feelings: the indefinite blue of winter skies, hot tones of strong chestnuts, cold notes of future and desired seasonal frosts.

 

That awareness can be found in textures and woven outlines in different colours, in the hugs of indifferent movements of stiff velvet and calm cashmere gauze, in the wrinkles of washed fabrics, from houndstooth to tone-on-tone patterns, to flawless and wide melange coils, from definitive silk, grabbed to rounded stitching, until stretched wool.

Daniela Gregis FW 2021-2022

Daniela Gregis FW 2021-2022

Daniela Gregis FW 2021-2022

Daniela Gregis FW 2021-2022

Daniela Gregis FW 2021-2022

Daniela Gregis FW 2021-2022

A show that starts little by little, because the creation is slow and fatiguing, and the season – we all know it – is the longest one…

Daniela Gregis Full Fashion Show FW 2021-2022

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