Paolo Carzana: London’s Slow Fashion Poet

LONDON — Paolo Carzana’s signature hand-dyeing techniques are front and centre in his studio in Smithfield, where the entire floorspace is covered with splashes of turmeric yellow, moss green and deep plum inspired by the work of 19th-century French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The Welsh designer is getting ready to show this Sunday at an increasingly fragile London Fashion Week, where he’s set to draw a bigger spotlight to his fledgling label.

Since graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2020, Carzana has attracted industry praise for a slow fashion approach that’s something of an antidote to the proliferation of micro-trends and meme-making aesthetics. The Cut’s Cathy Horyn called him a “poet” after his spring-summer 2024 show. “He sees something about beauty and the body that no one else sees,” she wrote.

“Everything always comes from a really emotional point, and is a complete mirror image of how I’m feeling about the world,” says Carzana. “Each [collection] is like a medicine: it’s never about going further into the dark; it’s always about hope and trying to get to a better place.”

At Saint Martins, Carzana began exploring the healing properties of garments, embedding essential oils into his dyes. The list of materials he uses reads like poetry itself: Cloudwool wool, antique bed sheets, rose petal fibre, peace silk dyed with buckthorn berries, hibiscus and madder.

His dedication to sustainability is unmistakable without the word ever being mentioned. “I feel really distant from many parts of the industry, with their endless synthetics and chemical processes,” Carzana says. “I believe the whole industry should be moving towards natural materials and processes.”

If the approach sounds hard to commercialise, the designer isn’t afraid of a challenge.

Carzana grew up in Cardiff, where he embraced art as an escape from school bullies. At Saint Martins, which he attended on scholarship, he learned to be self-sufficient, where “others had teams of people working on graduate collections,” he says. “I reject the narrative of struggling, even though I am. It’s my choice to show because I have something to offer. I’ve had hard work ingrained in me for as long as I remember.”

Carzana currently makes limited pieces for the likes of Machine-A and Dover Street Market but there’s early evidence that his work is resonating with clients as well as critics. “His design skills combined with the crafted way of using textiles are unparalleled,” says Machine-A founder Stavros Karelis. “When we launched a capsule collection at the store, it became one of the most popular ones we have ever done.”

Last season, Carzana staged a show in his own back garden in far-flung Clapton. For Sunday’s outing, to take place in a pub close to his studio, the designer aims to make his colours “dance” in three dimensions. “The challenge was to take fabrics like an organic cotton muslin and hand apply the colour in different ways. Normally, the garments are already made up and then dyed in a pan but this time round the dyes have all been applied by hand.”

The collection is entitled “Dragons Unwinged at the Butcher’s Block,” a reference to the nearby meat market. “Even as a vegan, there’s something really amazing about the traditions of the workers here,” the designer explains. “This show is about dualities,” he adds cryptically. “You can make it through pain and back. If we have our wings taken away from us, can we still fly?”

If a wingless dragon feels like a metaphor for London’s current fashion scene, Carzana is unwavering in his approach. “All I can say is for me, there is no alternative way; I just feel so strongly that it should be this way.”