Nensi Dojaka (Q3490)
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Nensi Dojaka is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Nensi Dojaka |
Nensi Dojaka is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
The evening of Nensi Dojaka’s summer 2025 show was a momentous one for the designer who arose, as if from nowhere, as the most visible proponent of ‘naked’ or ‘pandemic revenge’ dressing. After a year of abstaining from shows, she made her return to London fashion week, showcased her collaboration with Calvin Klein (which is available immediately) and launched her own website e-shop all in one day. “Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith!” she’d exclaimed in an interview at her studio.There are now many young women designers who are asserting different ways of framing and showcasing female bodies—the more the merrier, of course. But Dojaka’s comeback ( although she’s never really been away) was a reminder of exactly how precise, sensitive, and technically astonishing her work is. “In the collection, we have half of it that is quite organic and more floral, as always, and the other half that is a bit harsher, with more geometric lines,” she explained.Stretch tulle layering, micro-drapes and ruffles on bralettes, the architectural engineering of tiny straps with miniscule clasps—all these were visibly back in play: true to form. It’s only human nature to ask what’s new, though? There was plenty, including body-clinging knitwear dresses, some with vertical sheer/opaque stripes, and a fierce molded leather bustier dress that was a surprise—in a good way.There’s a lot more that she’s been doing off-runway that’s also surprising. Her lookbook for spring has denim, sequin body-dresses, and new fluted jersey flares. Pieces from this wardrobe are up for purchase on her website alongside the Calvin Klein collab.Dojaka has spent her time off the hamster wheel of seasonal shows to work on her Calvin Klein commission, and decelerate from the madness of growing too quickly as a young brand. She made her much-applauded show comeback into a fashion world that is actually far more understanding of designers who only show when they have something to say and not because industry expectations are forcing them on stage. And besides, the expense of showing needs to be balanced against any possible gains.Dojaka feels quite serene about this breakaway attitude. “I don’t want to put pressure on myself to do a show every season, and I just don't want to be in a position where I’m destroying my brand because I’m doing a show,” she said, pragmatically. “There are so many other things to take care of in business, and now we are really taking care of it.
That’s why now,” she smiled “it feels much better.”
15 September 2024
If Nensi Dojaka skipped showing this season, she certainly wasn’t skimping on designing and evolving her lingerie-meets-tailoring concept. For spring, she’s evolved it in several directions, including denim, minimal jersey pieces, maximum impact chiffon dresses, and even shoes with slender bra straps and sheer zones, echoing (and finishing) the looks and techniques she’s known for.Coming up with considered fashion takes time (as Phoebe Philo has taught)—timeandtrial, in the case of female designers. Dojaka laughed that she’s spent much more of the past six months than usual “wearing my things, and getting my own feedback. Everything has to fit, and be comfortable.” She is actually a designer who normally lives in black tailoring. Hence the care she took over shaping a radical new pant suit consisting of a single-breasted jacket with the top part replaced by a bra, paired with skinny trousers.Silhouette work has been a prime preoccupation of fashion’s most innovative designers this season. Dojaka took georgette—one of her staples—and cut the finest godets into super-flares on the wrists of body suits and jersey dresses and the ankles of leggings. It’s the kind of thing that begs to be danced in. “Huge sleeves that open up as you walk!” Another piece of engineering on a bra-topped empire-line chiffon evening dress was constructed to part in front and trail into a coolly graceful fullness of volume in movement. “I’d love to see someone like Angelina Jolie in that,” Dojaka speculated.She had paid plenty of attention to designing more of the sculpted, draped ‘naked’ dresses that made her name during the pandemic—pieces constructed with an haute couture level of skill. Still, her focus is on expanding on what Nensi Dojaka can be in terms of daywear. That might mean denims and matching bras, but with the flared chiffon leggings popping out underneath the jeans’ ankles. A styling quirk to set a trend running, that one.The Dojaka idea for separates—as opposed to her party dresses—is a system of cropped mini-cardigans and semi-sheer knitted skirts, underpinned by high-waist underwear and bras. “I really loved my mum taking me to see ballets when I was young in Albania. Maybe there’s something of that subconsciously in it,” she remarked. “But, really, what I like is that they are flexible. You can play with pieces from all my collections. I’ve thought of that always.”
3 November 2023
Nensi Dojaka doesn’t concern herself with thinking up themes and pointing to moodboards backstage to say “this look came from that.” Her subject matter is the female body; her self-set task is to appeal to the psychology of those who enjoy exposing theirs.It’s as simple, and as complicated, as that. For fall, she was showing plenty of skin in the teeny-weeny strappy minis and paneled see-through abstract bra-topped dresses that made her a post lockdown revenge-dressing youth cult.A couple of her new ones actually looked like stretch leotards with an attached train-skirt made from the sheerest denier stocking material. It made you worry: could a look like that even survive a taxi ride on the way to a night out?More constructive for her brand’s growth were her incorporations of ideas for more women, more body shapes and tastes. There were leggings with tulle frilled cuffs and terrific long black tailored coats. In the finale she’d taken on new-to-Nensi non-lingerie types of materials: velvet and a silvery caviar sequin.The one thing Dojaka said afterward is that she’s sensing a need for “more minimalism” in fashion. Her instincts are right. She’s a designer who can grow with her peer-group; help them to figure out what’s next after their naked dressing nights are done.
20 February 2023
It was 10 o’clock on a Sunday morning, but that did nothing to prevent Nensi Dojaka’s enthusiastic fans from dressing to display exactly how good they look in all manner of her delicately engineered bra-dresses, micro-shorts and jackets.The summer ahead looks good for them. Dojaka’s brand of sophisticated sexiness continues to stand out for its refinement, despite the unignorable tide of mass-market copyists that has surged since it took one look at the new body-con wave the designer launched during lockdown. Close up, the sensitive construction of Dojaka’s work, with its tiny rouleau straps, asymmetrical suspension and delicate trimmings, is so obviously in a class way above the world of cheap stretch imitations.Dojaka said that her starting point was thinking about using lace, the shimmery qualities of silvery lurex textures and palest pink sparkles, and as always, inventing newer things to do with chiffon. She never talks concepts or narrative, only about fabrics—her work is evolutionary, never theme-based. Her micro-focus is only on supreme fit, and perfecting the beauty of each piece.Against the illuminated backdrop of a white space, all of her lingerie skills in creating cutout shapes with intricately invisible boning and bra-cups edged with fragile frills looked immaculately accomplished. She moved forward with some of the best slip-dresses of the season; a tiny bit ’90s grunge-influenced, but for a new generation. She switched things up with a few cycling shorts and jeans contoured in two shades of denim, the latter worn with a black tailored jacket over a bra which was inserted with cutout hearts (a recurring motif throughout.)Then, the show-stoppers: three long, sinuous, virtually transparent chiffon evening dresses—beige, black, and one in a combination of dark cranberry and pink. They had trains; lovely in movement. Dream silhouettes guaranteed to put the name of Nensi Dojaka on many a red carpet.
18 September 2022
All eyes are on Nensi Dojaka. She’s a phenomenon, current winner of the LVMH Prize, whose fall show was a full fashion sensation—a collection that lifted her work, and London’s reputation as a platform for young talent, to a level that felt as if it could rival anything seen on a Paris runway. Her look radiated glamour, sophistication, subtle eroticism—a complete picture of female body-confidence, now sized for the first time to extend that power to women with curves alongside standard model-type bodies.Dojaka proved how her lingerie-based aesthetic, with its delicately complex array of straps, bras and cutouts, can now flex to encompass excellent tailoring, puffer jackets and knitwear as well as drop-dead, sinuously desirable long evening dresses. This time, she conquered the integration of new materials—leather, velvet, knit, padded fabrics—into a wardrobe stamped with the confidence of her personal woman-gaze talent for minute signature details, right down to the easy proportions set up by her strappy Lucite mid-heel shoes.Body-exposure as a pandemic comeback trend is a widespread thing—a generation’s fight back about what it means to be alive and out there, dating, dancing and celebrating physicality after the pandemic drought of opportunity to be young and hot. What puts Dojaka in a leadership position is her classy understanding of how to mete it out with coolness and confidence; the intelligence she has for choosing options for covering up while slaying.She’s almost ridiculously modest about these intensely hard-working achievements. Backstage, all she said about it was “I just wanted to introduce a bit more of a wider concept of what this woman can be.” Yet within that humility she’s providing directions that make women look and feel good, and secure, from every angle and sight line. That’s absolutely brilliant for red carpet step-and-repeats, of course. Dojaka is massively in-demand for all that. But where she’s going with this—and her tailored suits, jumpsuits, body-con sweater dressing and jackets to wear on the street—promises that her label will settle into far more longevity than simply answering today’s urgent generational hunger for living again.
19 February 2022
Nensi Dojaka is one of the freshest forces in womenswear for a long time to emerge from London, or perhaps internationally. A group of experts judged her to be that the other day, when they awarded her the 2021 winner of the LVMH Prize from an impressive field of global contenders. She had her first solo show today—a collection which showed all the finesse she’s managed to evolve in dressing the female body in classily engineered nuances of reveal and conceal.Dojaka’s is a total look that’s arrived just in time to greet the pent-up longings of young women who’ve spent too long in confinement and are looking for an exit from all-concealing smocks and whatever homewear descended to during lockdown. Here was her antidote, elevated from the summer’s crop top street craze to a luxury level: dresses topped with petal-like bras held on with minute rouleau straps to reveal plunging backs; high-waisted, super-fitted, tapered trousers and draped, twisted georgette tops. Tailored jackets, some of them detailed with separate sleeves, were tied on with slim black ribbons.Then the tights: Who’s ever seen legwear like Dojaka’s hosiery, with a cut-out zone containing a tulle flower on one thigh, and seams running up the front? Her repertoire runs through pointy, strappy, kitten-heeled shoes (the proportion resolver to prevent vulgarity), rib-knit dresses, draped swimwear and bras. The whole proposal.Dojaka has a lot of fans. Dua Lipa and Rita Ora are among them; like her, both have Albanian roots and have grown up in London. Dojaka has lived and studied in the city since she was 17 years old. First she learned the exacting art of lingerie technology at London College of Fashion—hence, her fanatically perfectionist expertise in the minute calibrations of fitting bras and multiple, adjustable straps. She then progressed through the Central Saint Martins MA course, then to her first group outings with Fashion East.The fact that her business was essentially formed during the worst of the pandemic—and that she’s been delivering and selling out on MatchesFashion.com, Ssense, and Mytheresa throughout—is testament to the down-to-earth realism of this hard-working young woman. She makes sophisticated, desirable, complex product that’s centered on the complex desires of her sophisticated female peers. Out of the dark times, here’s something really exciting to see.
17 September 2021