Lucía Chain is a cultural hybrid designer, connected with nature through ancestral crafts.
“From my Latin American roots I bring the connection with nature through ancestral crafts and the bond with the land. From my European roots, the sophistication of the silhouettes and a minimal purity inspired by the contemplation of the warmth of home and family. From my Oriental roots the poetic value of time and the appreciation of calm and pause. My identity is built by unique fragments…”
LUCIA CHAIN is an italo-argentinian fashion brand based in Piemonte, Italy. Committed to the environment, since the beginning of 2017, its plant based designs are made by hand in its little textile studio with raw local fabrics, organic dyes and recuperated elements. In this studio, in the rural area, well connected with nature, it projects and experiments looking for the complementation between art, poetry, crafts, technology and nature.
Multiculturalism and immigration are a main axis in its team, it has to do with a history that interpellates us. This is why it seeks to integrate and nurture itself culturally, starting with the formation of a transnational and transcultural work team, giving main value to the recovery of lost crafts and the training and independence of people in vulnerability.
“During our beginnings in Argentina, we managed to put together a work team based on the exchange of knowledge and multiculturalism. The intention was to start by providing free training to people who lived in our environment outside the big city, working with people in vulnerable situations and who are later recruited by large clandestine workshops. In this way, we expand the idea that fashion can be produced in a healthy way and make knowledge a tool for liberation. We seek to transfer this same plan to Italy in the next period.”
“In Argentina we maintain our studio dedicated to specially commissioned projects, collaborations and institutional product development for alternative businesses. Our products are thought out for everyone, that’s why we design free-gender garments, made with zero waste patterns and natural materials that keep bodies safe and healthy.”
“What makes us a unique project is the experimental dialogue between nature, crafts & technology, and working on sustainability especially from a social and ecological perspective: we think in inclusion when forming a work team, when we address an audience open to genders and ages, and the use of natural materials. Not only for ecological awareness but also because nature gives us what the human being needs, biodegradable garments and organic materials are less harmful to the planet at the same time for the human being. The proposal to work from the recognition of the local, to give value to education in the making of a noble and sophisticated product made by the recovery of crafts from an experimental, natural, social and regenerative perspective.”
Integrating circularity with biodegradable products and new bio solutions are created knowing that when finished the product goes back to nature not to landfill. In the same way, educating a team of people is integrating them into a fair system of emancipation and independence. Its challenges are: zero waste, fair society, zero emissions, regenerative nature, resource efficiency, secure society, adaptive and resilient.
“My dream for the future is to set up a studio with machinery and technology, to instruct mostly youth, in the recovery of crafts and the research of new biomaterials made from native plants. In this way, not only recover lost techniques, but also reactivate the passion for research and experimentation based on territory. Generating a multidisciplinary team in a well-equipped studio to achieve products that stand out for their made-how from an experimental and natural perspective, in order to position the brand among the world leaders in sustainable luxury.”
The brand was born out of the need to be true to its own history, to the values of work, family, local, craft and exchange. This is why the project is formed with the intention of decentralizing fashion, taking it outside of big cities and incorporating slow, artisanal processes that value the social into their ways of producing.
“Our products are thought for everyone, that’s why we design free-gender garments, made with zero waste patterns and natural materials that keep bodies safe and healthy.”
The experimental dialogue between nature, crafts & technology, working on sustainability especially from a social and ecological perspective. Production was redesigned, using only straight machines, a basic tool that is easily accessible to everyone. Through training and integration projects in a vulnerable area of Buenos Aires, a first work team was formed, which continues to carry out specific projects of local origin. The material used in Argentina comes from local cotton cooperatives, who work with ancestral and chemical-free processes, promoting their work and betting on the local economy. In Italy it only works with textiles of local origin, certified and always plant-based, in the studio situated in the rural area.
ABOUT THE DESIGNER
Born in Buenos Aires in 1988, Lucia Chain is a Fashion and Textile Designer with postgraduate degrees in Sportswear Design (Buenos Aires University, Argentina) and Fashion Business (Scholarship at Marangoni Institute Paris, France), at the moment based in Italy.
In 2014, as soon as she graduated, she won Semillero Uba, an award for the best graduation work of the year, and started her own brand based on transparency and responsibility.
After winning different competitions in Argentina and having her own shows at Buenos Aires Fashion Week three times in a row, her brand was projected to international events and fashion weeks in England (International Fashion Showcase 2016 British Council), Netherlands (Fashionclash 2017), Italy (The Next Green Talents 2018 – Sustainable Thinking 2019), Finland (Helsinki Fashion Week 2018), Brazil (Brazil Immersive Fashion Week 2020 – 2021), Uruguay (MOLA 2018), Chile (MBFW 2018), USA (Miami Fashion Week 2018), Costa Rica (MBFW 2019), Germany (Neonit MBFW Berlin 2019), Russia (GLOBAL TALENTS 2019 MBFW Moscow) and Japan (Que Bueno Buenos Aires – HPFRANCE & Rooms Tokyo), being named by VogueTalents and Vogue Italia: One of the Next Green Talents (2018).
She has been awarded by the Argentina Fine Arts to develop one of her collections in 2017 and by the Marangoni Institute to study in Paris in 2018.
Has co-worked with different textile companies like: Jeanologia (Spain), Alpargatas Textil (Argentina), LIQSA (Argentina), Topper (Brasil), and Ready-Made (Italy).
