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

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.

“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.

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.

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…

A made in Italy sustained by promising names is hidden behind the young Miaoran brand.

Miao, the Italian-Chinese designer of the brand, after an education in design and pattern making at the most prestigious European schools, began an intense collaboration with Missoni.In 2015 he founded his own studio in Milan and in 2017, impressed by the talented trait of the boy, Giorgio Armani supports the Spring/Summer fashion show in the prestigious Armani Theater in the Tortona area.

Even if it still maintains a certain eclectic style, Miaoran already shows constants that identify the way it operates: a recurring presence of oversized volumes, which offer the possibility of being worn without distinction of gender and age; a deep knowledge of the fibers which are balance in a reasonable way in the ongoing season; a playful approach to the composition of the collections, traceable in the use of a personal graphic and illustrative ability, clearly visible in the last Spring/Summer, more subtle in the chromatic compositions of the Autumn/Winter 2018-2019. Even the inclusion of unique pieces and the search for suggestive fabrics can be considered characteristic elements of the young and curious designer.

Attentive to the suggestions and narratives of the experiences in the store, Miao reveals himself every time a skilled and promising interpreter of the contaminations between East and West that increasingly meander in the reserved environments of fashion.

As always, an opportunity to appreciate the discovery is to accompany you into his show-room in Paris…

Find the Fall/Winter Collection of Miaoran

In the middle of the new Fall season, it’s a pleasure to return and to guide you in the discovery of the collections that gives form to our seasonal catalog. Returning to the good practice of introducing the new arrivals, we are starting with a new entry, the Swiss-Italian designer:

Elisa Wild

In absolute world preview, her work is hosted inside of our two places of belonging: online and in the Padua shop.

Elisa Wild stands out not only in the textile production, she also involves us in a detailed narration of her work and in the path that led her to be make clothes. With her own words…

“This adventure began, as is often the case, with a passion: a passion for textiles and the chance to work and shape them in the same way as sculpting a raw material. It was essential to make the materials and techniques in the project compatible, since every fabric responds to handling in a different way.

For many years, I have worked continuously on researching, studying and experimenting, in order to stimulate and inspire the design departments of the stars of the fashion world with sophisticated ways of working with textiles. But only now, with these dresses, has the dream that I have always harbored throughout my career come true: managing the entire creative, conceptual and technical process myself, right through to the finished product.

The project has therefore become a system in which the chosen fabric, the specific production methods and the entire process of constructing the object/garment merge to produce unusual, wearable effects. Finally, the ‘textile constructions’ for which we are known in the fashion world have become the dresses I have always dreamed of, as if the thoughts, ideas, whims and sketches in my myriad of notebooks found the right moment and means to take shape. Our workshop has left no stone unturned in researching and testing artisan techniques in its quest to achieve special effects with fabrics.

The BOLLE DRESS (bubble) owes its shape to a specific, extremely irregular hand-drawn design, which takes into account how the fabric will move as its form is reshaped by elastic. It is entirely handmade, and to a certain extent it is an empirical work… mass producing a process like this would certainly be a complex challenge to any manufacturer.

Those admiring the final garment may not appreciate how delicate the balance is between the effect produced by the shape of the dress and how it is made. This equilibrium stems from a careful study of the designs, proportions and procedures to create an item that epitomizes haute couture.

In the ORIGAMI DRESS, the concept underpinning the production — strips of fabric assembled three-dimensionally — and the cut of the garment were designed in parallel, and as a result the front of the dress is a compact modular system in which all parts are interconnected. In addition, the very dry and lightweight wool/linen canvas fabric chosen specifically for the dress can be doubled up, making it ideal for the origami-style folds. The resulting strength is an intrinsic part of the garment, within a simple yet sculptural shape.

For the NODI DRESS, a special design was created with a structure that runs vertically through the dress: a sort of comb with teeth made of small strips of fabric. Only when the sewing is done and everything is completely finished are these strips tied by hand, and the dress slowly takes shape, taking on its final appearance thanks to a spine of knots and bows that gather the fabric in at the sides. Truly a captivating design!”

A made in Italy learned, who knows to confront the most daring challenges of the great Japanese school, knowing, however, to defend and define its own creative authenticity.

Abirinzà, a sound more than a word, coming from the recurrent Earth cadences from which Daniela Gregis draw the inspiration for this spring/summer 2016, brings us important clues about the construction of a collection particularly full of ornamental patterns. The designer with this sound expression, probably invented, evokes the Sardinia, with its rooted and complex textile traditions, the extensive and expertise use of the loom, but also with its rich heritage of memories and nostalgia.

Abirinzà broods over the memories of hard work laying them down as poetic logos in unexpected positions, becoming systematic patchwork gussets, where two different possibilities combine themselves together: fragments saved from the past and reassembled in canvas next to a painting or more slow and difficult weaving, nets and gauzes, loom and crochet, embracing each other in perfect harmony.

The designer from Bergamo certifies in this way each piece, claiming an authenticity in the acrobatic vicissitudes of the paintbrush, that stains and gives new life to the linen nets, joint with their negatives in cotton poplin, because the process should be watched in its integrity, combining itself with the first work. The silks, in the slippery brightness of the crêpe de chine, become bright palettes of strained colour, in the more contrasting red-blue shades, but also in the less radical blue-pastel light blue and white. Or the vichy, quoted also in other seasons, widen themselves becoming definite squares with more and more large spaces, always treated with the washing to contain the cotton strict rigidity.

Abirinzà are the open doors of the memory silos, abirinzà are the surprises regenerate in the changes of thinking, abirinzà is the just started spring, abirinzà are the fresh starts and the promises of staying well.

Discover the full ‘Abirinzà’ collection on our online catalogue…