What is the next chapter for Brazilian-born designer Karoline Vitto’s inclusive and diverse designs? ‘Giving women full control over their bodies through dressing’.
Karoline Vitto photographed by David Bailey
“I design for the different stages of a woman’s life.” Brazilian designer Karoline Vitto’s success has kicked open a conversation about intentions and attributions within fashion, and how oftentimes the noise around a designer can box them into a look, a description or a definition for the following years. For Vitto’s fast growth as a designer, starting out right after finishing her degree in London mid-pandemic, editors and industry have been quick to segment her into a ‘plus-size designer’, when her architecturally informed sculptured silhouettes portray something a lot bigger and nuanced than that.
Starting a conversation about the outdated understandings behind the creation of a collection according to a stereotypical ‘sample size’ led Vitto to lead women of all sizes to explore and find themselves into a high-fashion conversation that the industry has largely excluded them from for years. With her focus sharply set on dressing the different parts of a woman’s life and cater to sizes from UK8 to UK28, she wants to further educate about the truthful reality of how clothes are not a one design fits all. ‘I think there's all these other challenges that come within having a brand that don’t involve a conversation about traditional sample sizes.’
Being relatively fresh in an industry that has changed by the minute, she started out by building a body of work during the pandemic, crafting sketching and shaping onto herself, creating illustrations over images of women’s bodies, breaking them down from an architectural point of view, and posting her work on Instagram. Soon, sales, community and interest followed suit in a way that she did not expect, as Vitto has continued to build upon a truthful community of clients, friends, collaborators and colleagues that have ushered in an honest, organic way of building a brand, something that is extremely rare in the age of conglomerate fashion.
Speaking to Perfect, Vitto is entering the new quest of her career - now that she has kickstarted a conversation about fashion catering to real life, how does she drive it forward in an age of ever-expiring trends and uncertain economies of scale across the entire industry? ‘I think the only way forward is to start building the path for women to feel comfortable across all spaces through full control over their bodies.’
Perfect: A lot of times when journalists write about you, or people are talking about you, it's about the fact that your clothes are made to fit a lot of different bodies and celebrate those bodies, but your clothes are more than that. What goes into your thoughts when you think of your work, and when you talk at length about it?
Karoline Vitto: Yes, it's great that you brought that up, because it's exactly what happened. People tend to put the brand in a box and tend to label it as a plus-size brand, or it's made to fit women with larger bodies, and it's always the same narrative, but for me, personally, it becomes a little bit tiring, and it has over the last few years. That's why, actually, I agreed to this interview now, because the majority of the time - like there's one question that I really don't like being asked, which is, 'Why did you decide to go into curves? Why did you decide to go into plus-sizes?'
I've answered this question so many times. Then, the honest answer that I give to people is 'Why not? Do I even have to go on about it?' Thinking all the way to the beginning when I started the brand, there was not a lot of people who were doing what I was doing, and there was the sense of editors and journalists trying to understand why, as a young designer, I decided to throw myself in this position that was a challenge in the industry. I think that was a legitimate question at that point.
I think I would much prefer to talk about the business, or the challenges in the industry, or how I go about balancing press and sales. I think there's all these other challenges that come within having a brand that don’t involve a conversation about traditional sample sizes.
We don't want to only be seen as a designer that does extended sizes. I don't necessarily want to be seen like that. I think it's great to know that we were one of the first who started doing it, but it would be amazing if other people were doing it as well. I would just like to be seen as, obviously, a brand that's centered around the body, and the body's very important, but that doesn't necessarily have to live within a defined box.
Perfect: What inspires you in film and art? Are you someone who takes a lot of inspiration from art, as your work touches upon sculpture and shaping. What are the artists that you follow regularly that have really influenced your work?
Karoline Vitto: I look at a lot of furniture and architecture. I go into a mid-century Brazilian architectural landscape quite a lot, and a mixture of materials, which inform the curves. I actually started studying architecture before I studied fashion, so that was my first step into the professional world of design, and the aesthetic in general that I followed. So yes, I've been following the work of some architects throughout the last few years, and I think that's what inspired me, alongside being interested in using metals, and the curves they produce in the material sense. Then, obviously, I'm also very inspired by music, it always starts with finding the right soundtrack for the shows. It's about finding the right atmosphere and the rhythm of the work, and just a certain mode to it. I love Brazilian bossa nova, and I love Brazilian samba, these are some of the rhythms that I try to bring into the work a lot.
Perfect: Growing up in Brazil, did you want to move away and change landscapes, or was it more that you wanted to go to a good school?
Karoline Vitto: It was more that I wanted to go to a good school. I also wanted to have an experience abroad. I wanted to have just the ability to just live somewhere for a while. When I moved, I thought I was going to stay here for a year, but I didn't think I was going to stay and settle. At first, it was about getting the education, because fashion education in Brazil is very technical in general, and focused on industrial fashion, so I wanted to focus on the creative process in general. That’s why I decided to come to London, and I think even though the work that I do is heavily inspired by Brazil and my experience there, and the way that I've been exposed to fashion, I think the creative process that I have adopted was something that I only really found here. I found it through experimentation with the right guidance from tutors, later developing it further within the brand. It’s a construct, but I think that the marriage of being in London with what I brought with me from Brazil is what has created me.
Perfect: Where did you grow up in Brazil?
Karoline Vitto: I grew up in the south of Brazil, in a small town called Caçador. There wasn't much going on in terms of fashion and art, or anything like that in general, so if we wanted to go and see an exhibition, we would have to travel out. Coming into London, it felt like such a privilege, and it's something that I always sought out to do. Not many realise that if you are from a big capital, you are geographically so privileged, in the sense that you have at least the geographical access to so much. Growing up at that time in Brazil, things were not so easy-access in terms of location, so it really took a lot for us to have access to inspiration and experiences.
Perfect: How did you find your community in London? Are you friends with a lot of other fashion designers, or is it just like artists and creative people? How did you navigate beyond school to settle in and feel comfortable there?
Karoline Vitto: Yes, I think, for me, obviously I made a lot of friends when I was in university here, and I met a load of people who were also studying fashion, and even though some of them are not doing fashion anymore, I think of it as the formation of my friends. There's quite a lot of friends that work across multiple disciplines - fashion designers, artists, stylists, or musicians and models. I just feel like I met a lot of people through work, and it just happened naturally with people that I share values with. Yes, it took a few years, definitely, and I think I'm quite lucky in the sense that there's different friends that I can lean on - we all are working towards something that might be a little bit difficult for other people who are not there to understand.
Perfect: Did you intern or work anywhere else, and what made you decide to start your own brand instead of going to work at a house or brand?
Karoline Vitto: It wasn't a fully-planned decision. It kind of happened, because it was during the pandemic as well, so I interned in a few places, I worked in other places, but I never had the traditional fashion experience. I never had that when I was in education, and also it has to do with the fact that I'm not European or English, because I was here on a student visa, and I was here for a one-year course. It wasn't really a course that allowed for internship time, and after it ends I have to go back, so I didn’t think about it. I had to find a way around it, so I interned in summer, and at a small brand as well. I learnt a lot with them in terms of logistics and management, later working with her on social media, and digital marketing.
No one was hiring at that time, and also it was really difficult, as I didn't have something lined up immediately. So, during that time I started doing my own work with the time that I had, and I was stuck in London. I couldn't even get back to Brazil, so it was a very difficult position to be in, but at the same time, I decided to do something in the pandemic, which was a value project, and I started doing digital illustrations on top of these women's bodies, from posters that I saw online, because, obviously, I couldn't see my friends, or get models to come and take pictures. I couldn't do any of the regular creative processes that I would normally do. So I started drawing on top of these pictures, and posting them, and people started engaging with them, so I started to get interested in them. It was funny, like it just kind of started from there, at that time.
I managed to share a studio with a friend that was rent-free, and we became our own COVID bubble. So we just started working together, and I was very lucky in that regard, and being able to use that, basically - I had some materials left from for my MA course, and I started making things. By the end of the pandemic I had built this body of work that was done in almost isolation, and when the epidemic ended I just got my website and I started putting it online for people to buy. I wanted to sell. I wanted to see if people were going to buy it and wear it, and they did. I was very interested and surprised, as there wasn't a big plan behind it. Obviously, when we started making sales and I started actually making sales more regularly from it, I understood that it could be a business, and then I sat down and I reword everything. I worked my way around my space, but after that, that came a time in which I couldn't have the studio space any longer for free, so I moved into a different house, where I could work from home. I had my studio at home.
During this whole time, I was trying my best to make it work as a very, very tiny business, until I got enough traction and enough exposure to be seen as a fashion brand more than an Instagram brand. And it happened over the course of the pandemic, so it's been like three years-ish that this has been happening like that.
Perfect: Let's talk about your design process, your designs often feel like they are sculpted onto the body. How did you develop your techniques, inspired from your love for architecture?
Karoline Vitto: So I always start from the body. For me, the main point exists in my head in the form of this perfect cast of models in my head, with different shapes, sizes, and different backgrounds.I had this vision of what I wanted in terms of a representation for the collection. Then I look for people that resemble these women, and they might be models, they might be friends, they might be ourselves in the studio. So I start from the body, taking a photo of that body, or having that person in front of me, or padding a mannequin to resemble that body, then I start collating and draping things on top of that. It's a very direct interaction with shapes, and there is a lot in terms of the process when it comes to a general idea. I like working with samples that are a size 16, an 18 or a 20, which is pretty much the middle of my size range, the reason being that I can bring it down and bring it up without moving too much of the design.
One of the main issues that I find with the majority of brands that will start from a low size, and then they would eventually then bring it up, is that you haven't allowed for certain shape variations within the design. You haven't really considered how a silhouette is going to stretch or move. so, finding the middle ground is that happy medium in which I can go to either end. However, when we do shows I have a few other key sizes in mind, so sometimes that would be a 20, or a 22, because I know that the model that I want for that size is going to be close to those proportions essentially.
The real challenge comes in when we consider the body’s unique curves, humps and shaping, and this is also one of the practical reasons why we use the metals, because they not only have the fact that they work as buckles, but also because they are not a flat shape. They are curved, but they also can move with the body, because they have a certain give in terms of functionality.
Perfect: Do you feel like your approach to this has to do with the world that you grew up in? Because it sounds like this, but also everything that you're doing, has a lot of cultural implications, and social societal implications, but it doesn't feel like you're doing them to make a statement, necessarily, and it's more about the practicality and the common sense of it.
Karoline Vitto: Yes, 100 percent. I completely agree. I never saw myself as an activist. I think, for me, it has a lot to do with just designing as a way of function. Again, I think it goes back to the architectural element of it. I think the beauty of design is that it has function and it works and it's practical, so it is what drove me in this direction in the first place, because I just love the fact that it's a solution. I just love to make something that works, and that works for a lot of people, and they wear it, and it makes sense. What excites me is the design process going forward with the brand, asking questions like what are the next solutions that I can create, and how can they be aesthetically different.
Perfect: So much of what you do is about form, and the body, so how much are you thinking about sexiness?
Karoline Vitto: It didn't have anything to do with the fact that it was sexy. I think it was more about how much body I want to show, because of form. So I wanted to be, really, almost neutral about it. I wanted to look at it from a form and shape perspective, just about what I can do to create a beautiful image. It was only about that in the beginning, and then as the brand progresses and your audience begins to interact with the product, you're focusing on sales as well, and then that is going to come into play in the sense of making my audience feel sexy, but also powerful.
We try everything on here in the studio, so we see how it feels. Once we put something on and we don't feel good in it, I know it's not working. If we put it on and we look in the mirror and we fee like we change the way that we behave in it, I know it's fine and it's working. Then, in terms of a brand construction and how I see the women actually buying these pieces and wearing it, I never wanted it to be exclusively just sexy or seen as only party-wear. There's also been an element of constructing this narrative that will start there, but will end somewhere else. When you look at the curvy industry in general, and the way that the models are depicted, or the way that they are seen, they mostly cater to a commercial category So, for me, it was about creating this space in which we could see these people as worthy of sexiness, as we've seen Victoria's Secret models in the 2000s.
So creating this space and doing it intentionally, we want to break this cycle, and have ownership of our bodies, understanding what we like to wear, whether it’s a little revealing one day, or really masculine the other, we have control over it. I can't just throw a bunch of models on the catwalk and put them in really baggy clothes, and really deconstructed, and blah, blah, blah, because people have been doing that with fuller-sized models for a really long time. It always feels like ‘let's put the bigger model in a big coat, because it's the one big piece we have’. So, I want this to look effortless and wearable, reflecting the woman in detail.
It has been a process of creation, and what we've been doing so far, specifically with the last show with the support of Dolce & Gabbana and Katie, we really created that space. It was so fun as well, and I think it was really representative of the kind of woman that I wanted to be when I was a teenager, and just imagining myself having fun, and living that life. I think now I'm ready to start constructing the next chapter, because everyone now knows what the brand is about, and they see that space and they understand it, so I think now it's time to start building the next way forward for these women to feel comfortable across all spaces.