Paolina Russo (Q3560)
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Paolina Russo is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Paolina Russo |
Paolina Russo is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Paolina Russo is on a gap year for spring 2025—at least, according to this season’s mood board. It all began with a trip that Russo took to LA. “It was the first time I’ve gone as an adult, and staying on Venice Beach, there was something really positive about the lifestyle,” the designer said, describing the surfers she’d see catching waves each morning, dressed in colorful swimwear.It’s this mood that Russo and her co-founder, Lucile Guilmard, wanted to capture in their latest offering, translated quite literally into Lycra surf tops featuring bold sunburst patterns, reminiscent of the Billabong and Roxy designs you’d find in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Beachwear is a new category for the London-based label best known for its knitwear: There was a brightly printed chiffon minidress, a sarong, and the brand’s first bikinis. Elsewhere, babydoll tops tapped into the boho revival that’s happening right now.While the searing color palette of neon pink and lime green won’t necessarily be to everyone’s taste, it’s clear that Russo and Guilmard approached this collection with a real sense of freedom. “It’s super important to keep this process of experimentation; it’s the thing that makes us excited about our job and motivates us to keep going,” Russo said. The duo, who aim to highlight a new craft each season, worked with artisans in Peru to create a hippieish crochet hoodie and Bermuda shorts, while jeans featuring handwoven lattice detailing were naturally dyed.Above all, though, the pair wanted to bring some much-needed joy into all of our lives via the medium of clothing. “We had a lot of fun making this collection,” Guilmard said. That positive Paolina Russo energy shone through—this season more than ever.
12 September 2024
Paolina Russo returned to Copenhagen Fashion Week for its sophomore show, after winning the inaugural Zalando Visionary Award last season. The London-based brand’s inclusion on the schedule is a reflection of the city’s growing global audience, along with its focus on sustainability.It makes sense then that design duo Paolina Russo and Lucile Guilmard are leaning into their label’s international appeal. “It’s always been our dream to travel with the brand; we don’t see it living in just one place,” Russo said in a preview. “It’s amazing that we can grow this community of like-minded people in Copenhagen.”Shared experiences across borders served as the starting point for this season’s collection, entitled “Cul-de-Sac.” Russo and Guilmard grew up on dead-end roads in a suburb of Toronto and on the west coast of France respectively. “We wanted to make our own Neolithic-like cul-de-sac; our own Paolina Russo suburb,” Russo explained.Continuing last season’s prehistoric theme, a circular set featuring giant stone-like sculptures formed the backdrop to the night-time presentation. The designers collaborated with Danish artist Esben Weile Kjær, whose work also explores “suburban boredom and coming-of-age rituals,” for a performance that saw models writhing around entangled in balloons shaped like the sun and animals, representing a modern take on monolithic carvings.In a smart move for the young brand, the pair doubled down on their signature illusion knitwear and sporty lycra separates, while introducing new silhouettes, such as a playful peplum-esque miniskirt, layered over joggers, and wearable wrap cardigans. The color palette was wintry in feeling, comprising earthy tones and pastel shades inspired by the way subtle rainbows are formed as “the light hits the snow.”Craft is an important focus, as is adopting eco-conscious techniques. Pom-pom embellishments were made from leftover yarn from last season, while woven dresses were naturally dyed in Scotland by placing ice cubes on top of powder pigments. “When the ice melts, this is when the dyes drip into the fabric,” Guilmard said.It’s clear that Paolina Russo is a brand that’s growing in confidence—with its creative directors itching to take their nomadic vision elsewhere. “It’d be amazing to bring this all over the world,” Russo said. “Copenhagen is our first stop.”
31 January 2024
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 andaboutpeople 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.
10 August 2023
Just a few days after Paolina Russo received word her brand is a semifinalist for this year’s LVMH Prize, the 27-year-old Canadian designer was already raring to go. “We’ve done a ton of homework to make sure we’re prepared,” said Russo of the short turnaround ahead of the presentations in Paris next week, noting she was running on plenty of adrenaline. “I’m very excited.”As she should be. Russo has been a “next big thing” among London tastemakers ever since she made a splash with her Central Saint Martins BA graduate collection in 2018, then followed it up with a similarly accomplished MA collection two years later. Such a splash, in fact, that she was quickly stocked by Ssense, worn by Solange and Rihanna, and scored a buzzy, sell-out collaboration with Adidas. (Russo is also a finalist for the International Woolmark Prize this year, with the winner to be announced in April.)Still, it turns out the LVMH nomination couldn’t have been more fortuitously timed: having recently brought on board a collaborator for the label, Lucile Guilmard, Russo now feels ready to take her brand to the next level. “Lucile has brought this additional part of the brand that I didn’t know needed to exist until I saw it happening,” Russo said. “The world of the brand has been able to blow open a bit more, and I feel so much stronger as a duo.” Said Guilmard: “We understand each other, and we have each other’s backs.”It may be all change at Paolina Russo HQ, but the latest collection feels like a smart, subtle evolution of the label’s impressively well-established codes. Titled “City Picnic,” the lookbook thrums with late 2000s nostalgia, charting the duo’s journey from small-town girls to big-city contenders—a glimpse of the mood board revealed a fever dream of Legend of Zelda video game stills, scene kid fringes, liminal suburban spaces, and garish cycling gear—that, filtered through Russo and Guilmard’s refined lens, translated into some seriously smart pieces.Classic cable knits were stretched and contorted to form armor-like patterns on vests and skirts, while a wonky Fair Isle was the result of the designers creating their glitchy lines and lozenges on a computer and then feeding them back to be woven using natural fibers. “Everything starts digitally, but then it’s about bringing it back to a place where it has a handcrafted feel again,” said Russo.
Perhaps the tidiest example of that were the earrings inspired by the forms of Japanese early-aughts cult toy Beyblades, seen last season in luminous plastic, but here carved in wood by a friend of Guilmard’s cousin: somehow both futuristic and ancient, like extraterrestrial weapons pulled from the wreck of a Viking ship.Meanwhile, crossbody bags were made from a reflective eco-leather embossed with the imprint of the knitwear’s ribbing to make an intriguing pattern, like the track marks of tires, or, as Russo suggested, graveyard rubbings. They captured the pair’s strange melding of childlike naivety with the cutting-edge. Especially mind-bending were the lenticular knits that created an illusion of the graphics moving as they stretched across the body, possessing an Issey Miyake-like lightness and ease of wear that belied the painstaking process of developing the hand-knitted technique into something that could be produced en masse.Or, at least, as en masse as the pair are willing to take things, given their yarns are hand-dyed in Scotland, spun in Leeds, and then assembled into garments in London. Their well-deserved LVMH and Woolmark nods may have given them an extra boost, but Russo and Guilmard are keen not to overcomplicate things. “With the clothes, we’re just trying to capture that special feeling, or urge, to be creative that you have when you’re young,” said Russo. “To build your own world using whatever you have around you.”
24 February 2023
“When I started this collection I was reflecting on who I wanted to be as a designer,” says Canadian Paolina Russo on Zoom. “In the past I’ve been the sporty colorful girl, but I didn’t really get to show the breadth of my world.”Google Russo’s name and the sporty, colorful ethos definitely dominates her results. It’s what has made retailers like Ssense buy into her collection and megabrands like Adidas seek her out for collaborations. But there’s more than meets the eye to Russo’s oeuvre. Born to a family of collectors in Canada, Russo inherited a certains sentimentality and nostalgia. For fall, she’s plumbing her youth, morphing video game heroines with aloof suburban teens. Knitwear is a main focus, with fully fashioned wool pieces in tonal colorways. Russo is a master of the stitch, turning cable knits into corset boning and draping a midi-skirt to hang from slinky hip bone cutouts. She’s pulled on her snowboarding past to create padded sleeve jackets that evoke ski gear. The few cut-and-sew pieces have a video game look, with neon insets and pleated skirts. On the whole, her collection pushes the Paolina Russo brand to a more essential level—not just show pieces but real everyday clothes. Let’s see where she goes next.
2 February 2022