Serena Schettino

WHAT’S YOUR BACKGROUND?

I was born in the Mediterranean Sea, without any foothold on dry land. My name is Serena and I was born in Capri. Isolated and perhaps far from the idea of fashion. I spent my entire childhood entangled in my mother’s threads, in her knitting workshop, dense with colours and full of the sounds of electronic looms. Without asking too many questions, I found myself ‘making fashion’, maintaining strong ties to a world of craftsmanship and strengthening my aesthetic vision, which straddles the vernacular and minimalism. I have always had a needle between my fingers, and manual skills are a fundamental part of my creative process. Ideas are born quickly and instinctively, my guide is my endless collections of images, sketches and sometimes thoughts. I always try to focus on the beauty of simple things. Perhaps beauty is simple. The identity of my works stands solidly on the one need: expressive calm and serene linearity. I imagine it as a continuous conversation, a coded language. When someone understands my works, their story, I can say that I have done well.

THE CONCEPT OF YOUR COLLECTION?

Colour; dust resting on drawers, brass rings. Light; filtered glow through the laundry of an ordinary day. Light and shade between the layers of hanging laundry. Idea; two arms stretch out the laundry, synchronous. It is dusk, the scent of wet cotton wafts through the air.

The white walls shape and divide those arms as they fold the sheets with distraction, protecting them from the evening humidity. Yesterday’s thoughts between the embroideries, today’s thoughts between the corners of these contemporary shapes. But not contemporary linen. Light to the eye, crisp to the touch like concrete air. Rain must not come. First of all, my collection is the development of an idea. So from a strong, conceptual abstraction, I created a form. I dreamed of volumes and geometries. The draping, the angles, the gathers, the opaque cotton, the light and shade. Then, there is the past, with its authentic embroidery and crystallised charm.