Oh Carla is a brand that defines itself as 100 percent handmade, attentive to the theme of sustainability-increasingly relevant-while winking at couture. In 2020, Carlotta Boldracchi and Claudia Nesi founded this brand with the goal of working closely with recycled fibers and offcuts focusing on the production of unique pieces. All almost always replicable thanks to paper patterns and depending on the availability of fabric. In short, a brand still in its infancy but with the potential to change something – even in a small way – in the world of sustainable fashion.
The latest collection, 003, takes inspiration from the clothes of female aviators like Amelia Earhart, Russian collages, and old pictures of Cher and Blondie. But not only that, it also looks to 1930s swimsuits, particularly those designed by Rudi Gernreich, legendary designer and inventor of the Unisex Project. Oh Carla, in this collection, also makes extensive use of the color nude, which is used to redefine the body with small, randomly embroidered elements, but always controlled by a definite pattern. One of the turning points of the collection is definitely the experimentation with tights, which are worked and burned to build small tops but also impalpable-looking dresses that give a “moving” effect to the silhouette.
The uniqueness of Oh Carla’s collections lies in the fact that they can only be purchased to order. An approach that – as we said before – looks at sustainability in a forward-looking way. «In a consumerist society the desire to accumulate non-essential things would lead us to say that to be sustainable one should no longer produce but this is obviously not feasible. The desire is to produce only garments that someone really wants and that every time he finds them in his closet he remembers exactly how much he wanted them reliving that feeling each time, day after day,» the two founders explain.
