Italian Essence – Lauren Worthington’s

italian essence

Lauren Worthington and Ian von Hessenbeck are the creative force behind the label illuah. Lauren, who began a fashion label in Indonesia at the tender age of 15, travelled to Florence and undertook a fashion business course. It was there she met Ian, whose background includes stints at Vogue and YSL. “Ian was interested in my vision and ideas, so we decided to collaborate and start from scratch,” explains Lauren. “Ever since then we have worked together, working on all of the backend bits and pieces to ensure a stable launch. We finally launched our first collection at the beginning of this year with hopes to present our collection at New York fashion week and a showroom in Paris. Unfortunately, due to the virus we have been on hold with a lot of things, so we are currently working purely online and are aiming to open illuah up to the Australian market.” Illuah is a luxury women’s wear brand, based in Italy. “Our main focus is to create sustainable, high quality items and to eventually move into being a lifestyle and wellbeing brand with an educational platform,” continues Lauren. Positioning their Collections as “seasonless”, the duo has chosen not to follow the fashion calendar. “Personally, we believe fashion is moving out of its old ways and the future of fashion is less – less collections, less unnecessary production. We offer bespoke, tailored and hand-made options and do not produce until an order has been made, ensuring no waste. We have worked so hard to make fully sustainable items to ensure we are one hundred percent no doubt sustainable. It’s been a really long process because sustainability is still so new and it’s rare to find for instance fabric companies that have eco-friendly fabrics with low minimums. “We have discovered many interesting processes that we want to incorporate into future collections, such as using unique fibres including apple leather and rose silk. Also, creating jewellery out of bullet casings from Africa, old jewellery and coins. In the future we want to focus on recycling and up cycling to eliminate waste all together and we hope to grow our collections to shoes and other accessories. Eventually, Illuah will expand from fashion venturing into interior, wellness, general lifestyle products and more.” illuah.com