There are at least five brands making runway debuts in Copenhagen this season; London-based Paolina Russo did so as the winner of the Zalando Visionary Award, a program with a focus on sustainable practices run in partnership with CPHFW. The brand’s reputation preceded it; and crowds gathered for the show. In keeping with the interest and their core value of inclusivity, designers Paolina Russo and Lucile Guilmard opened the show space to allow people outside to join their magical mystery tour.
From look one they conjured another world, and it was foremost the clothes themselves that delivered the narrative. Russo and Guilmard’s “dirty” denim and lenticular ribbed knits seemed destined for some runic rave. The duo had indeed been looking at cave drawings. “There was a folkloric base cut with trance and rap; and that’s everything that we do. We’re always taking something that feels folkloric, but then putting it into a futuristic context and finding that kind of tension,” said Russo in an interview.
Looking back at the brand’s past collections you’ll see a continuity of silhouettes and approach to embellishment; the way the designers (who are recent LVMH Prize finalists) frame those codes is what makes all the difference. Within the context of this season’s research—and the location—the coexistence of wrapped knits pinned with metal brooches and printed bodycon pieces conjured Viking vibes, touching on actual history as well as the fictive world of gaming.
The Viking Age might be long past, but emerging talents have to battle to survive. This brand finds strength in community, and that includes not just their enthusiastic friends and fans but their suppliers and craftspeople. When these designers speak about sustainability it’s in a material and a social sense; knowing and working with their suppliers is crucial. This is a kind of circularity that’s less talked about than material innovation, but it’s just as important. Fashion is for and about people from conception all the way through to wearing.
The collection was titled Monoliths, after the ancient stone formations whose placements and symbolism are largely lost to time. It’s their mystery that drew the designers to them. “We were trying to draw a line between these symbols and markers that humans have been making for thousands of years, and [see] how we can draw similarities between the things that we make in the now. Drawing on pavement as a kid and making these symbols on your driveway is almost the same as people making symbols in caves,” Russo said.
Those symbols, added Guilmard, were “actually a language of explaining what was happening in their day; and that was happening all around the world. Those people were not traveling, but they were all drawing the same thing. So there was sort of like a collective consciousness that was happening. They were all sort of connected without knowing each other, [through] a language of drawing, you know?” Sort of like a primitive form of social media? In any case, Paolino Russo’s runway debut showed that they are fluent in the language of a new generation, and that their work has a spirit that speaks to free spirits of any age.
