13 minute read
In Conversation With... Elisa Palomino
WORDS BY VIKTORIA BIELAWA
A world-renowned-fashion-designer-turnedacademic, Elisa Palomino is an advocate for the future of fashion, training the next generation of ‘the greats’ and pioneering ancestorial craftsmanship of luxury leather alternatives.
Portrait of Elisa Palomino
Elisa Palomino has the kind of style you just can’t buy - that eccentric je ne sais quoi that is eye-catching, without being attention-seeking. Today’s signature soft-pink flower accessory is as evident as when she first debuted on New York Fashion Week in 2010. It was like looking through a timemachine rather than the screen of my laptop.
With a rather intimidating fashion career spanning for over 25 years, Elisa radiates warmth, kindness, and genuine care (even through a screen), which is certainly reflected in her most recent project – the Indigenous Arctic Fish Skin. As an abiding sustainability expert, even during her glamorous and worldly fashion weeks, she has used her experiences in the industry to train the next generation of fashion designers.
“You bring a legacy,” says Elisa, “it’s very fulfilling.” Currently a lecturer for Fashion Print Pathway at Central Saint Martins, her past is drafted by training from some of the greatest fashion houses, including a personal mentor, John Galliano, along with Christian Dior, and Roberto Cavalli, Elisa decided to leave the boisterous world of fashion design and labels, to pioneer sustainable practices within the Fashion education curriculum.
VB: Obviously, you have such a vast recognition in the fashion industry. What made you take the academic route?
EP: My role was always as head of studio - it was very much like being a teacher since the beginning. I started recruiting and being in charge of interns, and that was particularly evident when I worked at John Galliano and Christian Dior. I would travel the world recruiting students to come and work with us, getting the best talent. Every three months I would change the team and have up to 13 young adults working with me, all coming from very different backgrounds – sometimes students and sometimes self-taught. After those 25 years, there was a time where I was a little disappointed with what was going on in fashion, so I decided that I need to start sharing all my knowledge. It's one of the jobs that I've been most happy with, because it's very fulfilling – you bring a legacy. I've learned all the mistakes and the good things as well, which have been really helpful for my students. I do think that teachers need an experience in the industry before they start teaching, otherwise, there's not much they can share. Even now, I'm still working within the industry and as a PhD student – I can bring a lot back to their plate. I think we need to keep on renovating ourselves because students are extremely smart and extremely demanding.
VB: That's very, very true. And do you ever miss the preparation and adrenaline of fashion week?
EP: Not really, because with the final year students, I almost get like 20 mini fashion weeks. Every year I'm helping these students have their own fashion show. I prepare them through the final year series to reach that goal. My job doesn't stop with the portfolios, but with the collections - helping them with styling, and how the collection will come out. We had some incredible shows from our students. A couple of years ago, one student actually did a whole performance, where we've had to change up the whole setup of the university catwalk - they all hated me! It was really challenging, but I never say no to anything. The dreams of my students always come first. I always try to make sure that whatever they dream, it becomes true. In a way, its facilitating their ideas, which is then multiplied by 20 or more.
VB: You’re like a fashion godmother! Speaking of shows - some luxury brands, like Gucci, with Alessandro Michele, are taking the stance against mass production, season-less collections, and scaling down. Do you think other brands will possibly follow soon? Will this become a new trend?
EP: It can't be a trend, we got to do things differently. We really need to embrace sustainability to be part of the whole process. Already, at universities - all the projects have to be embedded in sustainability. And all of you are thinking that way, you are imposing all the new health decisions and active lifestyles, and then follow it. For instance, Marie-Claire Daveu, head of sustainability at Kering, always said the same thing to students whenever we worked with her, "[it's] much more scary coming and talking to you than talking to a whole group of CEOs from luxury brands, because I know, your questions are going to be very direct, and your ideas are revolutionary". I think after COVID it’s even more clear, the way everything has been affected, from transportation to stocks. We really need to make sure that our sustainability, climate change and social sustainability is all tackled. If brands want to stay alive, they're really going to have to learn to work in that direction.
VB: You have adapted many sustainable practices into the university course. What does sustainability mean to you personally?
EP: Well, it means so many different things, and it's not just about how things are produced, but where are they produced? Who's the people behind them? How these people are treated? There are so many different things to consider. For instance, looking at the traditions from Arctic indigenous people. For 1000s of years were working in inhospitable habitats, where they had to deal with resilience, with not much available to them and whatever they had, they used to the limit - there was nothing that was wasted. It was treated in a very spiritual way. Honouring the animal, honouring the resources, and giving back to nature as long as there was an even intake. That's a way of thinking that we don't have anymore, we just take whatever we want.
VB: What is the project you are currently working on?
EP: I'm working on a European project, where we try to make fish skins much more sustainable, by using Chrome-free tanning gun methodologies, and natural dyeing techniques, natural water-based ink, digital printing, etc. If we first look at how these materials were used in the past, we understand what were the principles behind them. People who buy exotic-skin (like snake) want to show a certain status symbol – that they have money and are powerful. While an Alaskan woman would kill the salmon to clothe and feed her family through the winter months, using every part of the animal, and honouring it. If we look at this way of working with materials, then we can really start having a different relationship with nature: one which would be much more respectful. That's, for me, honouring the past and how it's been done, but also how it can be applied to nowadays. Everything that I've learned from these indigenous people, I make sure the knowledge is passed onto higher education students. From a young generation perspective, you have all these ideals that you would like to make with your future as a journalist, or a fashion designer. By attending these workshops, you can learn about these methods and communicate the message, reaching so many people who will then start using it as well. That's my goal. To work in many different ways, where I can really inform and, at the same time, inspire - which is what my role has been in the past as head of a studio. I was translating the ideas from Galliano into the rest of the team, and then the team was feeding them into the collections and so on. So, it's just the same type of work.
VB: As you mentioned, the aspect of traditional craftsmanship and passing skills on to others – do you think that this is the answer to mass production and limiting waste of fashion?
EP: I think we really have to go back to those skills that these incredible people have been doing for 1000s of years already and tap into why they were using them. If you think of the really harsh winters, it was a long time for them to be indoors, which we have been a lot indoors lately as well, because of COVID. We can choose between being desperate and not knowing what to do, or we can choose to learn new skills and crafts. In the past [they passed on skills through] storytelling from generation to generation. These families, would sit around the fire and tell stories about their family, which will really connect them with their ancestral past. They will pass on mother to daughter, and father to son all these different techniques - which were also survival techniques. They all had to learn how to sew and how to prepare the skin for a parka, because when they were out there fishing and the parka will break, it would be a matter of life and death. That's obviously not the same nowadays, but if we learn how to repair our clothes, how to take care of our clothes, and if we have made those clothes with our own hands - we realise that the process is long, but at the same time, it's so beautiful that we wouldn't be throwing things away. Within that craft, we value the amount of hours to put all these things together. I've done it myself with my own hands, learning a new skill. I think those things are important.
VB: Yes, definitely. And what is the Consortium trying to achieve with the Horizon 2020 FishSkin project? What's the long-term goal for them?
EP: The idea is working with them with fish skin material. We're mainly concentrating on salmon and looking at the lifecycle assessment of the entire process as it's a by-product of the food industry. Most of the time, the skins go wasted into the ocean, polluting the waters much more. We’re looking at ways we can upcycle the material, giving it a longer life, and looking at the different tanning technology that is available.
We're working with a laboratory in Italy, creating some new tanning methodologies. Working with natural materials, natural tannings, or with vegetable tanning [barks of trees]. We tap into that technology and all these natural dyes, with the idea that we will end up with a product which would be much more sustainable. We're also creating a portfolio of new prints and embellishment techniques, which we can offer to the luxury industry where they can choose between the two. The fish skins look exactly the same, and the cost is much less compared to exotic snake skins. We're not killing the snakes to produce the skins, they are the by-products of the food industry, and they come in this vast array of finishing. We're doing this with the perspective of a fashion industry background that a lot of the researchers have. We're also working with Japan, and I'm looking at their traditional printing techniques, working with people from Hokkaido and Kyoto Osaka University. I've been doing a lot of Indigo dye, trying to include all these Japanese crafts into the fish leather.
VB: So, rather than an alternative to all leather, it's more the exotic leather?
EP: Yes, because it has different qualities as well. For instance, the scales are really small and narrow. Which would make it more complicated with big surfaces; like car seats or couches, you would really need to put a lot of them together. But we are working on different ways of panelling and gluing, so that there's less work of sewing. At the same time, the properties are different as well; fish leather is extremely strong, people don't even know that, but it's much stronger than cow leather. It's not about removing cow leather at all, but it's thinking as an alternative of exotics.
VB: Why fish skin?
EP: The fish leather, has been used since the 40s by Salvatore Ferragamo. He started working with a lot of craftspeople and fisheries down from the north of Italy, who provided him with fish skins, where he created his own tiny methodology. At times of difficulties, like with COVID or WWII, people start thinking in much more innovative ways, which was the case of Salvatore Ferragamo. Then at Galliano, we started using fish leather in 2002, and lately, there has been quite a few other companies in Brazil who are actually using these materials too.
The only thing that I thought, and by no means am I a conservationist, is if it gets popularised and everyone starts using it, wouldn't that lead to environmental and population problems down the line? Because big companies who could start buying tonnes of this leather and then it would eventually lead to not killing for the means of ‘by-product’ but killing the fish purely for the leather, do you think that could happen?
No, that would never be the case. Within the project we would never go into that but we're actually working with Sterling University, who are doing a parallel European based project and they're looking at all the waste from hatcheries around Europe. It's incredible, the figures of all the waste around the world, there is definitely plenty for that. In any case, I don't think it would ever become such a big trend. It's almost like an exotic skins – there's a limited amount of people who actually indulge in exotic skins because it's very expensive. Also, fish skins are not particularly cheap neither, because there's a long process and they're quite small, and very much treated by hand because they have to be stretched by hand. The amount of work that goes into it is quite a lot. The project has never reached for bigger brands, it's more of a luxury item, that would never be the case.
VB: And do you think or are hopeful that the fashion industry can ever be truly sustainable?
EP: I think so. Yes. That depends on how much effort everybody makes. The consumers have the power, so if a consumer is asking; what does it mean? How is it made? What's the material? When they don't believe in any more greenwashing. Also, this is not just about buying an organic cotton t-shirt from, because we know that cotton has been overused. We need to look at materials that haven't been used as much. If we think of cotton or silk, materials that are really putting danger to the soil and the planet, and the amount of water that is used to produce all this content, we really need to look at alternative materials. When designers realise that and start being much more versatile with having a bigger choice of materials, then things start getting more interesting as well.
You said that it's the consumer that holds the power to changing. Do you think they are the ones that should demand sustainable practices from brands?
Definitely, and maybe someday demand the social sustainability in the same way with fashion campaigns to be much more engaging and inclusive. We have enough discovery with white models in fashion shows, and that has been happening for years and years. Inclusivity is something that rests in the hands of the consumers, which are from huge array of backgrounds and ethnicities. If the consumers do not feel recognised in the campaign then they won't buy the product. It's 360 degrees.
