In fashion school and in the industry, we are often taught that every collection should begin with a narrative. A historical reference, a specific story, or a grand emotion that sets the tone for everything that follows.
It’s a beautiful idea in theory: start with a world, and then design the clothes that inhabit it.
But for me, that approach has never felt natural.
I’ve never begun a collection by searching for an external storyline or digging through archives to build a conceptual framework. My creativity doesn’t spark from mythology, distant eras, or dramatic tales. Instead, it begins in something much more grounded and personal: my everyday life.
I design from what I actually wear, how I move through my routines, how I feel on a given day.
I pay attention to the clothes I instinctively reach for, the silhouettes I naturally gravitate toward, the fabrics that make sense to me in a real moment. That’s the starting point.
In many ways, intuition shapes everything.
And intuition, as I see it, is not a mysterious force, it’s simply the accumulation of everything I’ve lived. Every experience, every memory, every visual reference, every small moment absorbed without noticing. Over time, all of that blends quietly in the background and becomes a kind of internal compass. My creativity filters it, reorganizes it, gives it form.
That’s why my process doesn’t begin with a concept board or a written narrative. I create first. I let the garments take shape organically, following what feels honest and functional and true to me.
And then something interesting happens.
Once the pieces start to exist, even in their earliest form, I begin to recognize the “inspirations” everyone talks about. Not in the traditional sense, but in subtle, almost accidental ways:
a balance of color that reminds me of a place I once visited,
a texture dialogue that echoes an image I loved without realizing it,
a composition that feels familiar, as if it came from a corner of memory rather than a moodboard.
These details don’t lead the work; they reveal themselves afterward. It’s as if the collection, once it starts breathing, points back to everything that shaped me long before I sat down to design it.
This is my way of creating. Grounded, instinctive, shaped by lived experience rather than a predefined narrative.
And that’s the beauty of it: the story of the collection doesn’t exist before the clothes; it emerges through them.
Love, Claudia
