Golden age: how Joao Maraschin creates clothes for all generations

While speaking to the 29-year-old fashion designer Joao Maraschin, I’m reminded of the idiom: ‘Respect your elders and betters.’ The Brazilian-born, London-based graduate is inverting fashion’s fixation on youth, creating collections handmade by older women, designed to be worn by people of all ages. ‘I always felt that fashion appealed to a very young market. That doesn’t resonate with me. I want to consider how we can frame ageing as a beautiful process. I don’t like describing my work as “ageless”– I prefer “pro-ageing”.’ The designer shot his debut collection on Vanessa Voegele who, in the 1980s, modelled for Yves Saint Laurent. It was an experience that, he says, became the foundation of his brand: ‘Observing how older people dress brings the magic of fashion back to me. Now older women are both my muses and models.’

For his debut collection, ‘Foreigner Traveller’, launched for Autumn/Winter 2020 during London Fashion Week, he worked with two rural Brazilian communities to create textural pieces in vibrant colours: think red, turquoise and yellow grid prints, or chunky knitwear made from waste silk. Every craftsperson he works with – sewers, knitters, embroiderers and crocheters – is a woman aged over 70. ‘I came across these artisans and they were not working in their fields of expertise, which was a real shame, because they hold such a beautiful set of skills – and making is their life-long passion. I thought, there’s a problem here.’

To mitigate the demands of working past retirement age, pieces are made to order in small quantities. Maraschin pays the craftspeople a monthly salary, rather than per item, and encourages them to work at their own pace. It’s a lengthy process: handmaking one heavily embroidered skirt can take 15 days. One new piece, a black tulle top intricately embroidered with doodled motifs, is a creative collaboration with these makers. ‘We did an exercise together during lockdown: we each drew things from our daily life that had meaning to us. All of those drawings combined have created this design.’ This delicate garment forms part of ‘Truth Fiction’, his Spring/ Summer 2021 collection, which launched in November. Needless to say, the financial and logistical challenges of the pandemic meant creating this series was no mean feat.

However, the obstacles didn’t stifle his creative ambitions – far from it. Each piece illustrates Maraschin’s desire to think about materials in new ways or to put a fresh twist on the familiar. One industrial-chic top is knitted from worn-out bicycle inner tubes, shredded to form a sort of rubber jumbo yarn; a belted shortsleeved jacket is made from straw, used like a yarn for Tunisian crochet. Making this straw workable involved an experimental softening process – and convincing the craftspeople to get on board. ‘They sent me voice messages afterwards saying, “Oh, wow, you took me on a completely different journey”.’

With a growing number of stockists, a new website enabling direct sales to customers, and an upcoming residency in Senegal at Thread (a project by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in the rural village of Sinthian), this year should – pandemic permitting – be a promising one. ‘I’m thinking about the idea of the “Third Culture kid”. I’m half Italian and half Brazilian, I grew up in Brazil, and now I live in England.’ In Senegal, he plans to delve deeper into this idea for his next collection. And his future goals? ‘Often a brand will hire artisans for a collection and then leave them when the project is done. I’d like to work with up to 10 communities of craftspeople to provide long-term security for everyone,’ he says. ‘I want to be very transparent and have traceability across everything I do.’

joaomaraschin.com