Rhythms of Change: Paolo Di Landro's Fashion Revolution

Paolo Di Landro, an esteemed trailblazer in the realm of sustainable fashion, hails from the picturesque town of Ravello. Born in 1972, he now resides and works in Milan. His journey into fashion began after classical education and a scholarship to study Fashion and Textile Design at NABA in Milan, where he graduated with distinction.

Driven by a deep commitment to reuse and recycling, Paolo pursued further studies at the Royal College of Fashion in London and the Domus Academy in Milan, excelling in Accessory and Footwear studies, and delved into Textile intricacies in Como. His commitment to sustainable practices led to the creation of a distinctive clothing collection, distributed across Italy. Recognized by the Neen Group for his contributions to Anti-Fashion and Digital Fashion, Paolo is celebrated as an avant-garde figure pushing industry boundaries.

Notable collaborations with global brands and institutions, like Artisanal Intelligence and the Albertina Academy of Turin, highlight his impact on fashion research and innovation. His role as an educator at the Unidee Academy in Biella, affiliated with the Pistoletto Foundation, underlines his dedication to nurturing future sustainable fashion pioneers.

A significant milestone in Paolo's career was the launch of RITMO 22, a project that pays homage to sociologist Domenico De Masi. The project, showcased at AlbumArte in Rome and curated by Alessio de' Navaques, merges fashion and artistry, showcasing Paolo's signature blend of punk-inspired poetics and innovative upcycling techniques. This collection leverages garments as powerful mediums for expressing circadian rhythms and societal reflections, underscoring Paolo's unwavering commitment to innovating fashion.

Join our exclusive interview with Paolo Di Landro x RED EYE:

Hi Paolo, welcome to RED EYE. You have defined your approach to fashion as "anti-fashion" and "digital". Can you explain what you mean by these definitions and how they are reflected in your work and creations?

My point of view, my way of looking at a garment, is not anti-fashion in the negative sense of the term, anti not anti-fashion for me it is not a desire to detach myself from the classic canons to be against, but it was for my first period, 1997-2017, a forced path in which I experimented and worked above all on myself and, at times I saw that being against gave me much more adrenaline, I was first of all anti-Di Landro. My digital part comes from the fact that my garments, despite being made with very often vintage or off-market fabrics, with these Icreate trends, working not only on the material and its mixes, but above all on very strong and aggressive volumes and colors, with a typically digital cut, almost like a virtual game. Digital and Anti-fashion can be seen or glimpsed depending on the projects I am going to develop, I work thinking first of all about a theme, about a thought that I would like to share with other people, obviously we are not always able to make ourselves understood, and despite it is more pleasant to be understood, perhaps sometimes we are notable to explain well what we want to say, then as in speeches, without realizing it I move from one thought to another,exactly as happens in a digital blob and I would say above all mental, in fact more than digital, I would say thatI went from material work, where I loved breaking patterns and deciding what it was and what it could become, to less material but more mental and intimate work, but precisely this being analogue makes my work seem not modern but eternal , for this reason digital. My digital thinking approaches the critical thinking of many bio-physicists and philosophers who makes dry and precise criticism of the new capitalism, which is the digital and technoliberal one, not of the digital which is used to create wealth and a better future, therefore I am against siliconization of fashion, not against the new digital model. Digital derives from the Anglo-Saxon term Digit which means Digit and not number, here my work is digital in the sense of digit, not number, as if to underline the need to find a stylistic code that reflects my daily life today, my work not relying on trends has led me to always formulate new clothing alphabets.

Regarding your project, RITMO 22, can you explain how you worked to explore the concept of conformity and the role of fashion in it? How did you integrate words and messages on clothing and accessories into RITMO 22, transforming them into carriers of meaning? What was the intent behind this choice?

Conformity is not conformism in my opinion, being compliant for me wanted to express my being compliant, not for convenience or to agree with someone, but because I wanted to be closer to others to feel like others, not out of respect but to understand what they want say trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes. The word conforme that you used in your question, and I thank you, gives me the way to clarify even more what I wanted to say with Ritmo 22, in fact if we just think that conforme comes from the Latin Conformis, which means of equal shape, composed of with and shape, and then I realized that I also wanted to investigate the word Retto, from the Latin Regere, which means to direct and guide straight,so it seemed to me that to express the conformity of our days, a more appropriate garment than the sheath dress and the t-shirt they did not exist, also because they are the two items that most conform us to a moral law, a law that of the internet which should conform to a logic, something that I often don't see in the virtual world, because it is used in passive and not active manner . The internet can be licit or illicit when we interact with it without laws in conformity with honesty, convenience and the common good, it becomes an exercise in morality, I wanted to shout out my fear for this dangerous custom, I didn't want to accuse anyone either clear, to make the oral, in fact I only looked at the laws of law and social, community and collective growth, not individual and moralistic. Another key that I examined in the project isAllowing, not consensus, which very often betrays the true purpose of digital, allowing means being in agreement, or inharmony with others, but this point is quite ambiguous and is little clear on the network, so I then wanted to play with words, not to tell but to report the story that very often the network, the digital, tells us, but which however makes us all conform to a single thought: power, importance of it in all its forms, charismatic and selfish. I have always been compliant with my principles, online today it is difficult to remain compliant with one's principles.Machiavelli said that man has three great difficulties that do not conform him, that is, he has different languages, different orders and customs, hence the difficulties of globalizing and siliconizing everything arise as far as I am concerned. The Great challenge I have undertaken since 2018 is to be able to create no longer according to my taste, always, but by creating a collection satisfying my taste and the next one satisfying the taste of others, I want to learn to guide my genius,not be guided from it, I believe the same thing should be done with the internet but very often we are unable to control it, and this does not conform to a free and contemporary gaze. The word, the choice of the written gesture was useful to me because I wanted not to send a message or tell in a didactic way such a complex and delicate, almost religious topic, the network is the new god, for many not for all and therefore dangerous, but precisely because I do not conform or have never paid homage to power, this is why I wanted even more with the gesture of writing, with the Word which has a double meaning: intimate and public. In digital you have to conform to very specific rules, so with the words I wanted to highlight the sacred conformism of the new capitalism, I'm not taking it out on anyone, I'm just reflecting intimately with myself and with the society in which I live, it's not a criticism towards a virtual world which amuses and intrigues me but,towards our conformisms and moralisms, which we could manage better if we were more prepared and free. I believe,personally, after 20 years of freedom, or rather of pseudo-freedom, that today I need a LIMIT, and with Ritmo 22 I have almost paid homage to the limit, I have glorified the limit, which is then the necessary condition of any individual or collective existence, because setting a limit is a point of reference for everyone, it prevents losing one's compass and then having to face destructive confusion; in all the great civilizations the structure of them, in addition to individual freedom and culture, there were numerous prohibitions, in all of them murder, gratuitous violence on another being and theft are prohibited, today with the internet these very basic concepts are not they are very clear to everyone and we need to think about how and what we are leaving behind us. If we just look at the Laws of the Ten Commandments,seven were prohibitions, fundamental laws that have a universal value, even in the Greek world, well before Plato's rationalist philosophy, the limit was considered a foundation of the polis, or for example tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles talkabout dramas triggered by the overcoming of certain boundaries, against all common sense, here today I needed to make clear that certain boundaries should not be crossed, and I said this to myself, not to other people. I no longer want to violate the order of things, we should never do so, because catastrophes inevitably occur, and digital has taken too much of us, we are prey to this passion that devours us, and from this hubris comes the just punishment which is the end of an era, but why does an era have to end if we are not prepared? The limit for me is simultaneously CONSCIOUSNESS and EVIDENCE,and expresses the impossibility of bending reality to my will, and in this case to digital, taking this into account, with the gesture of writing in this work, has conformed me to a principle of reality, therefore the choice of petit robe noire and t-shirt, and allowed me not to have any illusions about the extent of technological power, but rather to exorcize it by making the sign manually. The experience of the concept of limit and boundary then structured the entire psychological part of the work. From this new thirst for power, and above all from the desire to appropriate it for general interests, we seeShakespearean kings declare wars and cause disasters... if all minds allow themselves to be overcome by excesses, terrible things happen. Generally the limit is overcome following three different drives: the thirst for power, greed and the refusal to accept one's life, a sort of metaphysical rebellion, with which one would like to go beyond the human condition like Faust, if the network leads to this it is not progress but wars and destruction, in fact from these three bombs the techno libertarianism of the network is born, which is a will for power, for unlimited enrichment, and a clear denial of mystery and death, I therefore wanted to speak and communicate with simplicity in a location where we talk about reality,deal with simple and fleeting things, such as words and the forms where they are applied.I don't think these factors have overlapped but have strengthened each other, their negative effects have multiplied, almost generating a chain reaction between them, all these words which have so far drawn limits, tell us that they are all, sooner or later, to be overcome. I also wanted to say that it's time to stop using the world or people for personal purposes, but setting limits would be much more sustainable and ethical. It would be desirable for man to seek the infinite, with curiosity and creativity, thinking of bringing well-being to all humanity, saving lives and improving life, not caging menslike new slaves. Infinity is the opportunity that each of us has to contribute to the common good, today I am looking for that, that is the reason for strong words, which I wanted to touch the deepest chords of each of us. Man today with the internet and digital technology has triggered a war whose aim is no longer physical goods but the human mind, well, I Really can't understand this... no matter how hard I try, I can't, we don't feed more the spiritual and divine part of ourselves but, they made us believe that with digital we are ourselves and tyrants with our peers...a problem that comes from the disappearance of every limit, and from the absolute triumph of pride and arrogance, here with my work Ritmo 22, on which I worked for almost 2 years, I wanted to reflect on our dirty days and with a very acrid and heavy air.

RITMO 22 seems to address profound issues such as homologation and personal identity. How do you believe fashion can influence society in these areas? Do you hope that your designs can promote greater awareness and a different perception of clothing?

Homologation and personal identity are two keys that the greatest designers, and even small ones like me, have puzzled over, but when you think you've found an answer, you're off to a good start. The thing to start from is to explain what homologation and identity mean to me. Since the beginning of 2000, a phenomenon has slowly imposed itself on our lives, standardizing them all; this is Internet Addiction. It has shaped our consciences, generated feelings of guilt, and pushed us to the point of losing our identity or mastery of ourselves. Here, I tried to clarify this point better. I wanted to indicate the sense of permanent abstinence and the inability to resist the urge to connect, and from which arise school and work problems, manifestations of asociality, family conflicts. I wanted to bear witness to a discomfort of our times also through the use of polyurethane and PVC, to indicate desolation and self-alienation. We are all like drug addicts, whether we recognize it or not, this should be clear to us. In short, they have given us a multiplicity of ways to avoid CRASHING AGAINST REALITY, that is, to submit and homologate ourselves and deprive ourselves of identity. Reality does not disappear but is continuously modulated to best satisfy the preferences of the tyrannical user. The touchscreen has generated a new type of power, as if we had the world between our fingers, a form of indolent domination, which has doubled with the vocal, all of which has established new dominating attitudes. I find apps that modify the face or that lead you to create avatars of ourselves very interesting, but they also take away manual skills from a creative person. But, apart from this, it is because we feel the need to play at exaggerating, at overcoming the limits; we are becoming prostitutes of our spirit, and this is truly unpleasant, and in such a climate, I want to return to the essence and study of reality and everyday life, creating for the pleasure of doing it, not creating to make money. I wanted to create garments for normal individuals, not for superwomen. I never liked heroes... no, no. I don't want to be mute or silent; I want to kill the words. I don't think the word is rhetorical, even less on a garment that can be worn or held like a painting. Reality resists less and less and increasingly accords with our desires, and this is not an easy thing to sustain, and to bring back to a job where the final result must be a wearable and basic garment. Selfies are an emblem of the loss of identity, especially for fashion, which can no longer propose but be at the service of the street and the people. There is a refusal towards the work of a designer and a clear submission towards the brand, towards an identification not of class but of thought, which is even more serious. To flatter the ego, but above all to strengthen the feeling of being absolute masters of one's own life, without having to ask anyone's opinion and support, each individual is given the power to act as he or she sees fit without understanding that in this way he or she restricts or limits himself or herself. Limits the right to self-expression. In glorifying the internet, abusive authority figures are also abusively glorified. Nowadays, a creative is no longer an artist but an orientation towards the right platform of taste, and personally, I don't believe in this. In my opinion, this feeling of power is fueled by another ideology, the ideology of FREEDOM. Everything is due since things can circulate via cable... is this really the same for fashion too? Everything must cost little, otherwise, we don't buy it; this is not the way to approach fashion. Cracking old clothes for me is like taking a dive into Bygone Eras... I need it to understand where I come from. Another real problem that I continually ask myself is ambitious; I would like to make my clothes accessible to everyone. Fashion influences collective and personal choices, but it does so in a thousand different ways; there are many designers, and fortunately, each one brings and expresses his creativity, obviously, we can find the vulgar and the refined, in my work, especially when I am following a I am more conditioned for my project if I were to follow a scheme decided by another, and I also find this a very fun way of tackling a work, in freedom. I believe that my work, like that of every stylist, who works more by veering towards art, not out of snobbery, but due to personal and talented abilities, works on homologation and identity, continually moving the bar to abandon fashion and find that lightness and candor that represents oneself and the idea of fashion. The great plague of homologation arises in my opinion from the concept of gratuitousness, while personality from an anti-system choice, but both are daughters of the free era, of the internet era. I don't have much play in social media not because I don't like them, I'm right for this period, but I believe that my work develops in another way and not simply worse or better in my way. Today my positions are perhaps branded as conservative or by losers, in the name of the inalienable freedom of the internet, it is evident how the crime which characterizes the techno-libertarianism of the fashion industry conquers consciences in an insidious way. I use other forms, not so strong, but powerful, because I don't want to colonize people with my clothes but, I'm working to destroy that idea of homologation of fashion and also that of identity, as long as there are cages there won't be my job, limits yes, cages no. These concepts create little tyrants who always want more power, not the power to act, which is positive, but to act on their own and only to satisfy their own interests, so I don't find myself in making more garments with an identity, nor in making garments that conform to trends or requests. Today I want to stop and just make art, I want to talk and say what I think about many things, and I do it with the means with which I can speak and communicate: fashion. Today I want to free myself from my constraints, I want to emancipate myself and be myself without any fear. I believe that people have the right to behave as they please, but they must do so with serenity, with love. But every emancipation, even the one I have tried to bring with my research, derives from a tension between individual and collective, according to an implicit logic of sharing between intimate and public. In this period of tyranny of the internet, which has undermined politics, culture, and art, and obviously also fashion, the surplus of domination does not lead us to many high social cultural emancipations but, we all remain in that small domestic framework, in which everyone feels like a king. The great fashion industry sees itself as made up of ideas, fast in a completely chaotic indifference. With my ideas, I get out of this chaos, and it is not easy to get out; you are like a migrant, like someone who has betrayed his family. I never took advantage of the moment. We are witnessing for the first time in the history of humanity that individuals consider themselves the omnipotent masters of their lives. This has brought us to a world not with one tyrant but with many MICRO TYRANTS, more or less intoxicated with their power. This intoxication I also tried, but I preferred to leave it to others. I vaguely felt and am horrified by such a future, so I would like whoever buys one of my pieces to be close to my thoughts but, I would never want a follower, I'm not a God. Whoever chooses one of my pieces knows that there is a different way of understanding fashion and therefore perceiving oneself and contesting the division between psychological and social. In my works, there is no excessive MATHEMATICAL REASON, but rather it is all in PURE REASON. My leaders, therefore, cannot be crazy, against the regime, indisputable, rational, superior, and infallible, but they always pass into the river of eternal error. With my work, I would like to try to make each person more a protagonist of their own life. Spinoza said that if you take away man's free will even on the choice of what he should or should not wear, the Sad Passions were born from this. My garments are born from sweet melancholy but become worn Passioni Allegre because they are playful and wearable and therefore useful and usable every day if you want to be happy. My work promotes awareness and a new way of approaching fashion but, it has been doing so for many years now without claiming wealth or breaking ties with generations that preceded me. They are Service Clothes, they are useful for something, they have a precise purpose and above all a strong social value, one could define them as CARE DRESS, alluding to a characteristic of my way of working, involving in my path art, fashion, photography, cinema, literature, and philosophy and above all my visceral love for NATURE. In short, my work, after almost 30 years, has transformed from a personal project to a social project. Di Landro's garments could be called Emotional, or empathetic works, this is my approach towards others. They are clothes that excite the person who wears them, they operate taking the psyche into account, they have a transhumanist logic I could say, I wanted to convey my personality to the work I did, so that they became pleasant garments to wear. By saying these things, I may seem crazy, but this explains only my love for people who have different ideas and values from mine, this shows my inner stature.

Upcycling has become a central aspect of your work, emphasizing the importance of sustainability and reducing waste in the fashion industry. How do you think upcycling can help create a more sustainable future for the fashion industry? Have you noticed a change in acceptance and interest in this practice in recent years?

Let's say that the term Upcycling is very close to me and especially after two decades on which I have worked on it with great passion. At this moment, I would like to investigate that more planning part, starting from the basic garments. I don't know how Upcycling can or cannot be useful to the fashion system. I certainly believe that today, at 50 years old, I don't think there are recipes, and that the only recipe is to work seriously and only do it if you have something to say. I believe that in this moment of social epilepsy, as Lionel Naccache says, after all this implosion due to wars and profound hatreds, after we have fought for power and alienated ourselves collectively or individually, I would like Upcycling to bring people back to love each other, to do things together. We are, as Frantz Fanon, philosopher of colonization and psychiatrist, said, like mentally ill people, beings divided between ALIENATION AND FREEDOM, and with Upcycling we can also talk about a deterritorialized Fashion. I haven't noticed real acceptance and interest from both the fashion system and consumers. It is considered a practice, not a real way of operating, so as not to continue to destroy the planet. Perhaps a designer who deals with this is seen as someone who has failed as a designer and tried to do this, but in reality, it is wrong thinking this. Doing upcycling also means having a living civil and social responsibility. Then I'm not the one who does Upcycling, saying that is like saying about a foreigner: he's Arab, he's Ukrainian, he's Palestinian... we're not different, or rather we're different, but I don't say about a designer, the one who designs clothes, I say his name and that's it... don't you think so? Upcycling is also born from the hardships and needs we are experiencing today, from the brakes and laws, and from individual and collective malaise, so I don't think what it will become in the future. For me, it has already become something else for almost 7 years. In fact, today I teach this technique and try to transmit it, however, with the courage and light of experience, so it becomes a much more structured and mature experiment. I don't know what will collapse and what will remain. I certainly hope and wish that everyone can have the freedom to live their creative impulses, free and not generated by production systems such as assembly lines. I would prefer to go with limited production or on request, so as not to create or create less and less rubbish. Very often, I experienced discomfort, which came from a constant tension between feeling powerful and realizing it of our alienation... and I chose to alienate myself, and also more alienating work practices such as Upcycling. These inconveniences are the ones that lead to more and more mental disorders and to new conflicts between societies which always see people colliding only for the desire for power and the desire to dominate. Upcycling is a bit curative, it distracts you from power and the desire to dominate because you know that you depend on what you find, on the mystery, on what reality wants you to find it. Upcycling is a movement like punk, or glam, or other cultural movements in fashion. With it, we have the illusion of being able to solve a very important part of the production structure, but it is unsolvable and perhaps incurable in certain cases. Upcycling has been for me with professional sobriety, and with firm conviction, a healthy and imperious policy of myself and my work as a designer and artist. Fashion is using Upcycling for many reasons. Everyone has their own glasses to see fashion, and Upcycling serves to reduce waste, to focus attention on the climate, and on the central theme, which is the impoverishment of resources and of means. Towards the end of the '90s, a phenomenon, until then unknown to the general public, began to appear regularly in some more conceptual lines and in various newspaper articles until it reached the covers of magazines, radio broadcasts, documentaries, reports, and series. Upcycling was jostling for a place in the sun. The term, almost unknown until recently, is gradually starting to spread until it becomes a subject of study in fashion academies. Upcycling, for me, refers to a MENTALITY, to a kind of PHILOSOPHY, the nature of which is difficult to grasp, possessing a very personal exceptionality, bordering on the sensational and sensitive feeling. For me, it's a movement born with Chanel, which is made with a fabric available, a fabric to make underwear, dresses, and day jackets. So, I believe that every designer, every creator, has exploited it, each in their own way. I started my concept of Upcycling at a very young age when I was studying at Naba, in the late '90s. For me, it was the center of the world, important and therefore not to be missed. For me then, it was about life and death, so using living or already lived garments or fabrics gave more meaning to what I wanted to say: LIFE AND DEATH. That's what Upcycling had and has for me. My thoughts on Upcycling are transhumanist, but I don't feel like God of myself. I move the divine into work, so a physical, human person can dream of even defeating death, but you win if your garments are eternal. My garments are, if they were a collection of clothes, it would only become a copy and could not be eternal. Therefore, a brand does and would struggle to work with Upcycling. It could make use of it, as study and research for the more tailored and limited edition part, or even better, create an upcycling line from old collections, but this should be given into the hands of artists and visual artists like me. Mine is the same concept as Silicon Valley, where they too think that they will soon overcome this limit by working actively for some time, bringing everything FOR THE BETTER, according to them, including life finally free from any boundaries... This is basically the theme which I set out to make Ritmo 22. But I think there is also a lot of ambiguity with this because progress and immortality are confused. I don't believe in such idiocies, but I try to understand, not because I believe it is an easily reachable horizon, but as an extremely significant symptom. The transhumanist perspective of my work legitimizes, in its messianic horizon, the project of those who propose it. It takes on a performative value intended to ratify in everyone's eyes the greatness of the vision supported by Upcycling and the techno-libertarian world of the fashion system. But a brand cannot think of creating eternal collections; it would not be fashion but rather Upcycling. Extending the life of a garment and killing a garment, Bill Maris of Google Ventures has already revealed that a man can live 500 years. We are not satisfied with winning a set; we are interested in winning the match, he says. I believe that we need to return to the facts, as we still have no tangible proof, and live without any more anxiety about war. There is a guilty and induced confusion, and a mystification that must be denounced, and I believe that I have worked not only on eternity but also on death. I believe that you cannot approach Upcycling as a way to stem a simple technical problem. I am not convinced that Upcycling is done to make the world better. I don't believe, as Jobs stated, that the Mac would save the world; such a messianic profession of faith does not belong to me. But as those at Google say, it is possible to save the world thanks also to Upcycling, but it is not enough on its own if it is relegated to the little game to be given to the environmentalist flat earth dreamer. Taking care of our planet is above all getting your hands dirty and sharing your riches; it is not utopia, now it is a necessity to save everyone. Sharing is in our DNA; we've just forgotten it, but it's there. Making the world better, with Upcycling for example, constitutes an empty declaration of intent. Love your neighbor, digital technologies, or upcycling cannot be considered as primary vectors of well-being, present, and future of humanity. I believe that this fragility is because there is no political project, with clear principles, intended to regulate the life of upcycling, and whose realization depends on concrete actions. The design of this movement, a trend let's call it what you like, has vague outlines, which associates TECHNOLOGIES, THE WORLD, and GOOD. I believe it has much more to do with a VISION OF THE WORLD, a concept developed towards the middle of the 19th century by Wilhelm Dilthey, in an attempt to define the spirit of an era, the way in which a community considers human action, the natural environment, social relationships, economic production, and artistic works. The collective representation of a quantity of phenomena that give shape, more or less sensitively, to the social framework. In Upcycling, you can also find many knowledges of the world, which create communities and not conflicts, and like digital, increase a new INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY, and we see the emergence of collaborative structures of anything with anything else. Computationally, the charisma and evanescence of Upcycling respond to the organic vitality of the fashion system, and can guarantee a world between fashion and art that is better organized and free of conflicts. It seems almost impossible not to get involved in the game of these good intentions, to remain insensitive to his charitable spirit, and not to give him any credit at all Upcycling could illuminate existence like digital, but if it is inspired by the consumer society, it becomes technical but empty stuff... and without heart, there is no sustainability.

In summarizing my journey with Upcycling, it's not just about reusing materials or making fashion more sustainable; it's about instilling a new consciousness in both creators and consumers. It's about challenging the existing paradigms of production and consumption, and envisioning a future where fashion is not only about aesthetics but also about ethics, sustainability, and shared humanity. The real success of Upcycling lies not in its widespread acceptance or its potential to become a trend but in its ability to make us rethink our relationship with the clothes we wear and the world we live in.

As I continue to explore and expand upon the principles of Upcycling, my goal is to foster a more thoughtful, responsible, and creative fashion industry. One that respects both the artistry of design and the integrity of our planet. It is a call to action for all of us, to not only dream of a better world but to actively participate in its creation. Through Upcycling, I aim to contribute to a legacy of change, one garment at a time, encouraging others to join in this movement towards a more sustainable and compassionate fashion landscape.

Among your collaborations and future projects, what kind of message or theme would you like to explore in the near future? Are there any particular reasons why you chose certain collaborators or research styles?

To the question of what were the challenges and opportunities of working with great professionals, I wouldn't know how to answer, but I certainly know that working with people who are better prepared than you, with people who have much more experience than you, has various implications: I have sometimes unconsciously understood and other times consciously didn't understand that I had a great opportunity, and sometimes I knew how to exploit this, while other times not. They certainly taught me to be or not to be in a certain way. It's not easy to work with me because I carry many wounds inside me, like everyone else, and I am trying to heal these wounds for a next life to be aware of my actions. You know, I believe that until you have a clear vision of your world, you cannot have a clear vision of the facts and what is happening to you; therefore, you create an incorrect image of the world and of yourself. We must know what the world is, and from this, we know what we are. When we believe or see that others can give us the truth of things in their vision, here we are making mistakes, but working with the greats the opposite happens because they have managed every time to pull out from me my vision of the world and see my truth. We are made up of substances in continuous transformation, which interact with each other at all times only if they are great souls. For me, there are no prominent or important people; there are men and non-men. I have been lucky enough to only meet men with a great soul, great magic, a great mystery. Sometimes there are attractions, other repulsions, which between them build and keep creative buildings standing; the incessant circulation of flows has structured my educational skeleton. Sometimes I have not lived in full agreement with this flow, and therefore I have voluntarily or involuntarily chosen to be outside the creative environment, for which I have always felt a love-hate, in a continuous imbalance. We must not resist this flow and its vital impetus but rather embrace it and nourish it at an even more intense pace in order to contribute to the harmony of the universe and its inhabitants. Human reason and action must tend towards this objective, and working with adults has taught me this and not only that. It is tiring when instead of helping, you have to be or feel like a burden, in terms of speed. The mission of a great person is to merge us with the trend of the world, a condition for a full experience. The greats make us experience that OCEANIC FEELING and a perpetual RETURN TO EVERYTHING, as Lou Andreas Salome said. Working with great souls is a gift from Heaven. The world has a network structure; our dynamic vitality resides in its nodes and lines of flight. Here, I have always refused, and perhaps I did well; let's even remove the traditions based on a static order. The collaborations I had, few of them, destroyed my inertia, made me understand that sometimes I represented the enemy. With them, the miracle happened; they gave me tools capable of redeeming and better guiding my creativity on every occasion, and which will soon be free from its miserable Heideggerian DASEIN, an existence that must go outside the human from which it was conceived. We must reach that supernatural power that is typical of AI.

Your investigation into the homologation represented in RITMO 22 seems to evoke a space of social criticism. Howdo you see your role as a fashion designer in generating critical reflection on society and its norms? Do you believefashion can be a means for social change?

Society and norms must coexist; this very complex symbiosis almost always creates a clash of civilizations, as we know. Societies arise from complex formations, develop over a long period, have a culminating moment, and sometimes use violence or force to expand or increase one's own power, not the collective one. Here, at that point, I try to intervene not in the political but in the civil sense, with my own gesture of cultural civil disobedience. For this reason, and not only, I clash. Fashion has a very significant role in society because it reduces the margin of freedom of people and populations to the advantage of an automated management of life and the marketing of every moment of everyday life. Fashion wants social change; it is social change and is irreconcilable with the life of the man who lives in the past, present, and future, but the positive thing that opposes it frontally is or must be loyalty; otherwise, the relationship doesn't work. Each represents the exact opposite of the other; each implies the eradication of the antagonistic civilization in my works if it wants to survive and develop. My work tries to create a program with all my strength, but I don't always have the desire, the genius, or the means to be able to do it, so lots of ideas fly around the internet, and I'm happy about it. One trend strangles the previous one little by little... it makes me tender because it doesn't understand that they want to destroy it; it doesn't know exactly who to believe, how to position itself, whether it's appropriate to move or not. I don't want my work to be subjected to this game because, for me, fashion is not a game; it is my essence. A battle, that of Upcycling, has already taken place, but it has been carried out by only one side, my creativity. My work is something that concerns the whole of society; it involves us all, not just me, but for lack of awareness or weakness of will, we remain stuck while the danger continues to grow. We are faced with a clash; I have to choose between freedom or subservience to powers and systems, which decide in my place, and above all, ours. I believe that my fashion is a public service. Georges Bernanos said that a society does not collapse like a building; here, I believe the same thing happens for fashion. I believe that fashion disappears together with that type of man, with the type of humanity that it has generated. Here, with my work, I try to walk and change with the society I live in and what it generates, always remaining Paolo Di Landro, but with a renewed humanity. Upcycling was born precisely in a society that has a plurality of ways of dressing. I am called to real political mobilization with my work, but I believe it happens to anyone who lives in this transhumanism flow. This commitment represents one of the fundamental issues of our historical period. Technology arrives where a man is alienated from decision-making processes, but I know how to make decisions about my work and my choices, and I can do this because I am a free man. I have my own autonomy of judgment and my own freedom of action. I can say that I make a dress, but I do it artistically. I don't sell my garments; today, I create installations, and this makes me happy, and many others who can understand that art does not have a precise form or use; it is only an intimate and social action. I don't want to resign myself to this alienation from myself, but I want to oppose it, even alone. It takes what is called conscious commitment, loyalty to a tradition by which we are partly formed, conviction in the transition to action, and elementary principles that should guide companies and nations. It is time to open our eyes and broaden our concept from creative action to political action, and its opposite. We are faced not with a social problem, but with a civilizational one. We cannot accept a civilization in which we intend to automate everything and orient people's lives according to interests and private life... no. So, I clarify that my work is absolutely not against progress but against the dictatorship of progress that decides what is or isn't cool; let's decide together to stop this horror film. Private interests are not progress but social injustice and lack of civility. We point the finger at internet addiction, for example, instead of seeing the power dynamics in place, and all the controversies over the protection of privacy, without understanding that it is not this that is threatened but rather our right to live and work freely. Attention is missing; what I wanted to convey with the work RITMO22, as Leo Strauss or Tocqueville already said, considering the lack of attention the crucial point in modern democratic societies. Therefore, with the right amount of attention, I wanted to investigate the health phenomena of the collective conscience and its moral scruple. Knowing how to observe the abuses of power of techno-libertarianism and striving to regain my autonomy is a fundamental political issue for me. I believe that we are all obliged to start again from the Kantian imperative that says, "The autonomy of the will is that property of the will which it is a law unto itself," meaning we must not limit ourselves to administering extraneous interests, but we should try to exclusively show our ability to command as the supreme law. This was my intent. I believe that this way of thinking about my creativity today goes beyond the pure exercise of Upcycling which involves competitions and money and personal interest. My imperative today, required by my days, is the active involvement of my work in society, trying to involve all the social forces interested in my research. This is doing community work, creating a network, a perspective that must assert the aspiration to freedom, to quote Hannah Arendt, who in a state of civil emergency gives precedence instead of liberal ambitions, to radical positions, in the American sense of radical, which lead to actions on the field aimed at breaking a certain order, which is why the little black dress was chosen. In other words, I have been organizing an organized insurrectional action for a few years now. I am trying to work on, rejecting today a trend considered irresistible, that is, Upcycling, replacing the study of volumes with the study of the project and its civil and artistic value. It is a need that requires giving me the opportunity to study other methods capable of combining creativity and common sense. I felt called to frontally oppose this extremist anti-humanism, adopting new studies made of simple and recognizable gestures, capable of making each of us a normal hero. In general, I analyzed the facts as a first step, and in the course of my work, I came to condemn certain states of affairs of the fashion system. Today, a further moment has arrived, which calls me and calls us to oppose illegitimate and abusive situations, and I believe we have a duty to suggest other perspectives and to put forward new proposals, which if implemented could change things for the better. In general, the protest, the complaint remains much more impressive than the alternative solutions; up to now, I have concentrated my work on the protest, to perhaps attract more attention and find a greater echo among the people. Abstraction and the lack of realism have sinned in excess. Now, I want to create support points where my work and that of those who collaborate with me can concretely rest. From so many missed targets, we should be able to learn lessons, imagine a sort of methodological revolution. I need and have tried in recent years to deactivate the theoretical trend for a moment and engage in more concrete, absolutely concrete areas. I must establish a list of pragmatic gestures, immediately effective and disruptive. Today, digital technologies cross a threshold, disrupting from top to bottom without real consensus on the part of people and civil society, changing our lives and the principles that we consider fundamental. I believe that we must do as Camus's man in revolt, who knew how to say NO, we must understand that for each of us there are limits beyond which we will never go. This No affirms the existence of a frontier, extending one's rights to beyond a boundary beyond which another right confronts and limits it. Today, I made the words of Camus's man in revolt my own and declared in our life that there is a limit beyond which I will not go. I don't believe that man is measurable; this commodifies life and, above all, I don't want a society managed by algorithms. This is a dimension contrary to our principles, which makes a mockery of our collective existence. I will not go beyond that limit because I do not accept it, and I accordingly oppose it. Today, when that limit has been exceeded, I recall my fundamental principles. It is like a great refusal, a great refusal promoted in the 1960s by Herbert Marcuse, who intended to stand up against the indefinite expansion of what was called consumer society, which brought out ways of life, according to Marcuse, with one-dimensional behavior. I am aware that this radical position has achieved only partial successes because the consumer society consciously or unconsciously exerts a great fascination on people. The great refusal, perhaps then, failed; the weapons were too weak to counter the seductive power exercised by capitalism, capable of using flamboyant disguises with skillful techniques. Today, I want to resume the spirit of the great refusal in my professional and personal journey. Our great refusal will not be large but narrow because it aims at a very well-identified target: the senses and the works connected to the internet. Today, I no longer believe in production because I first of all refuse to buy, and this refusal has not only a political value but also an act of civility. Instead of destroying the clothes, I destroy the model from which they are conceived and invalidate their reason for being by sending them to the scrapheap in advance through our refusal. A century and a half later, I am inspired by the position of the writer Samuel Butler, when in 1872, he suggested that while some things prevent us from calling for the total destruction of machines, it is necessary to destroy all those that are not indispensable to us, so as not to become even more slaves to their tyranny. It is not enough to declare refusal; you also have to identify the places where to practice it, in what form, and with whom. I am trying to do this in my existence today. I don't believe in spontaneous rejection but in methodical and organized rejection. Today, I'm trying to define my plan in detail, and RITMO22 was the manifesto of my current path. I oppose the robotic management of our lives. Failure exists when a man lets another prescribe what he must do; that is a waste wreck.

For the future, I would like to enhance my sensitivity and my attention, what I had has become perverted. In my future work, I want to encourage the independence of the individual and the free expression of our abilities. In other words, I would like to work against fatalism, selfishness, and cynicism, to arrive at a new humanism, committed to replacing the uninterrupted and deadly conquest of the world, of life, with the celebration of creative power in all its forms, such as photo-video-performance-site specific installations. This is a primary condition for the realization of projects to hold exhibitions, alone or collectively. I aim to increase the common good, making respect and human integrity my charter. As Orwell said, I would like a common decency, a decorum that in principle everyone has inside and just needs to be sought.

I feel, as Orwell said, a common man, not an artist resigned to accept a modest and unambitious condition. I am only able to act freely and conscientiously, without using violence against others, against myself, and society, and without undermining the foundations of my balance. This is my dignity, knowing that the existential and universal horizon is infinite, and that I can and must explore, without bothering anyone or altering the harmony of the environment in which I live. It is the only condition for the exercise of my freedom, without ever confusing the wonder of expressing all my vital power. I want to know how to make all my potential shine, starting from the tragic awareness of my condition, and I would like to testify with my works, the inexhaustible and irreducible richness of every human being and my infinite love-hatred for life.

You’re teaching Sustainable Fashion at the Unidee Academy in Biella. What are the main pieces of advice yougive your students when it comes to integrating sustainablepractices into their creative work? How do youencourage them to consider environmental impact in the design and manufacturing process?

I teach Sustainable Fashion, 2nd year, and for example, I wanted to set the program for this academic year on the REMODELING AND VARIATION OF BASIC GARMENTS. Perhaps I was misunderstood; after a few lessons, they understood what I was asking of them: I was looking for their personality. I wanted them to tell me who they are without lying, SEARCH INSIDE YOURSELF. This is because I would like them to unlock their creative knots and be able to release GOOD ENERGY, GOOD VIBES. They must have the courage to lay themselves bare, seek for ourselves and others a GOOD LIFE, A GOOD JOB.

At the end of the 1970s, Michel Foucault theorized the advent of a neoliberal rationality, which put everyone in competition with everyone else and brought out the individual-business, the entrepreneur of himself. He is his own capital, the producer of himself, his own capital, and the source of his own income. I try to teach girls to be the source of their own income, aspire to independence, acting positively and quite autonomously. They should understand that economics is collaborative, and they should work on a political evaluation of fashion. I teach them to oppose, claiming their freedom of expression and association, and to reject the neo-capitalist system. It will not be easy, but the task of every teacher is to be on the side of a young person's dreams to make them focus not on desire but on the dream. Upcycling is a kind of counter-cultural fashion movement for me; it does not only have a textile value but was born with an idea of political theories for the celebration of a Dionysian sensoriality and a powerful rationality, which works on the psyche and the market. I do not want to create a closed community but open in language and relationships, seeking a balance in the frontal encounter, working with technology, on a human scale and not submissive to it, seeking not an all-American SELF RELIANCE, raw self-sufficiency, but moving from the heart all. We often talk about fame and money as an unnecessary evil, and I encourage them to be happy, not to be known.

I chose people who chose me; I never waited, I did few things because I got lost in a thousand useless things, but getting lost helps me find myself. And then, I don't think there is a right or wrong way to be an artist; there is your way of being and working. Sometimes, if you find people who make you be more productive and put me in line, I prefer it. I need order and discipline; this makes me positive. It makes me produce more regularly. Obviously, I also learned to do it alone, even if I always prefer someone smarter than me in the bureaucratic and PR aspects, which are not my strong point. The styles I look for and that I was looking for had, more in the past, much less, always a rich first look. Now instead, I am appreciating clean, simple, and almost basic things more and more, but because I believe that I work with my existence, not in a detached and cold manner. The main advice I give to my students at Unidee is to search for their identity and not be ashamed of it, and, above all, to always experiment and delve deeper. Sites and other apps are not enough; to study, you need books and libraries, and not only iconographic books but books of philosophy and essays. For me, being, as Leopardi said, FASHION IS THE SISTER OF DEATH, it is not knowing how to do it technically, but starting from theory then moving on to technique and arriving at a complete final project, where there is a balance between dream and real life. I try to teach this. I encourage them and all the rest of the teaching staff, who have much more experience than me; I am only in my second year of teaching, with debates, performances, studies on fabric and its elaborations and manipulations, and then within my course, also dealing with reuse and recycling. I always underline the ethical motivation behind their academic path, which lasts three years plus two of specialization. I encourage them by trying to make them understand that the younger you are, the more in-depth work you have to do. I want depth and truth from them, their own, not that of other colleagues or prominent designers. Another thing that I would like them to understand is that study and research both in fashion and in art is a job in which you cannot and must not pretend; they must always try to be consistent with their nature and with nature that hosts us. Today, perhaps we can also say that the sustainability issue is a fulcrum where many entrepreneurs in good or bad faith want to invest, but it is better to invest to help the world not explode than to help it explode. And for this reason, I ask them to be sensitive, attentive, and study a lot. My classical preparation and then my three years of philosophy of law, in Padua, have formed me a lot, perhaps they have also made me didactic and heavy in some moments, but that'show I am, because I grew up in a Catholic environment, in which a lot good is often confused with sacrifice.

What are some of the obstacles you have encountered in promoting upcycling and sustainable fashion in thebroader context of the fashion industry? What do you think is most important to push the industry towardsgreater sustainability?

The biggest obstacles I have encountered in promoting Upcycling, one of the topics I have addressed and investigated inmy own way, is the relationship with seriality and the media. The historical and theoretical study of serial forms isinextricably intertwined with mediological reflection. Today, with social media, culture and virtual and real life have alsobeen serialized, so this has created some problems for me in having work accepted that was based on a single piece,sometimes without a technical andmodeling project but, created only sartorially, without a real factory you cannot haveease in communicating and making a job go round, as Foucault said in 1982, the modern subject already defines himselfby carrying out a PROBLEMATIC AND PRACTICAL experience, with games of truth and falsehood, which serve toknow certain objective areas, here we must recognize that for centuries there has been no experience or game withoutrelation to the media environment, I have investigated more the PROBLEMATIC part islinked to the most instinctive andintuitive nature, on nature and on the earth, here today the 'upcycling, and I for one should also work on the PRACTICAL part linked to the media and social media... This is what those who do upcycling should do today. Upcycling today mustnot only always have that part of LUDUS, but also REAL.I would like to shift the traditional conceptions of the relationships ORIGINALITY-ART and SERIALITY-INDUSTRY, cleaning things from narratives, from those stories that make everything so false and perhaps finding newforms and new combinations for a socially widespread consumption of a playful but ethical type. From the Gutenberggalaxy we move on to the mediatized world of the 19th and 20th centuries, arriving at a new mediation in the phenomenaof the digital age which affect both the collective sphere and the individual self. It is necessary to reconstruct therelationships between seriality and the media, that is, to work individually and socially, understanding that we willlive alife that is increasingly virtual rather than real, this also determines my choice of study on shapes and lines, for me fashionmust be in movement, not fixed, just as art, or death, the virtual can fix this eternity, recording and documenting ourtimes. The leaders today must represent as PLACES which must themselves be the narrative of the community and oftenmythologized, in industry there is a mediamorphosis, in upcycling very often it cannot, precisely because the garment isnot repeatable as it is made with waste fabric...The Upcycling mechanism usually tends towards kitsch and a paternalistic relationship with the customer, today thosewho do upcycling must do it on the opposite of waste, that is on SERIALITY, comme il faut paraphrasing Eco in fact hisideas on seriality could very well be apply to the sustainable fashion industry starting from radical positions, betweenmass series and original art, coming to understand the potential of seriality as the basis of a waste that can generate a DE-AUTOMATED experience, Benjamin talks about it in the WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF ITS TECHNICALREPRODUCIBILITY, we must recognize the great centrality of mass production and capture its contemporary aestheticforms by trying to neutralize the value of the seriality and serialization of the product.In Anglo-Saxon cultures SERIAL and SERIALITY, and the French analogues FEUILLETTON and FEUILLENEMENThave long been seen as negative, as in the fashion industry. In garments today the boundary between old and newmustdisappear, this phenomenon has been intensified with the advent of online digital platforms in the world of fashion andupcycling, exploiting customer loyalty to add and merge different audiences. Today a brand works on UNCERTAINTY-PERIODICITY-HABIT, these are the three points on which sustainable fashion should focus. Focusing on the innerspace, the world today seems to expand on the one hand the desire to escape into imaginary environments, on the other ademand for experience, here today sustainable fashion could work well here. The fashion industry is obviously clashingwith sustainable fashion, these serve to create something new. This clash occurs mainly to dominate the space, theenvironment which are offshoots of ourselves, the social structure, the body, the ego, the we, our inside and our outside, itis not a simple thing we must try to do everyone doing their best... if possible, thinking of our good and the commongood. We need to certify, carry out a DETECTION, aimed at codifying the traces of our work. I experienced precise phases as if in a magical tale: violence, an adventurous path of overcoming tests, a final clash with the IMPURE EVIL,and the return to the HOME finally put under control and finally a change of status which droppedin social level , butabove all psychological and existential. To push sustainable serial production it is necessary to reconsider, from a morecomplex perspective, some dimensions of the cultural history of the brand, reinterpret the history of one's brand, analyzetransmediality itself more fully, as the diachronic gaze allows us to enhance the peculiarity of the forms of narrationtransmedia of its production structure. We should therefore delve into a formal narratological approach to the garments,which investigates how each individual piece is made step by step, create true STORYWORLDs, then there should be asocio-cultural approach which connects different forms of STORYTELLING, and finally an approach centered on therole of audiences, aimed at analyzing their experience and their history, it takes EXPANSION, COHERENCE andCONSISTENCY within their context.

Your research and work are strongly influenced by the intersection of fashion and visual arts. How do youreconcile these two disciplines and howdo you think they can harmonize to create a more complete experience forthe audience? Finally, what is the legacy you hope to leave through your work as a fashion designer? What do youhope people take away from your creations and what messages do you hope to communicate through them?

My experience between fashion and visual arts is an ongoing path that will also depend a lot on the opportunities I willhave to present it in public. Today, when I deal more with visual art, I have chosen SERIALITY, while inthe past while I was working on Upcycling, I had adopted a more free and ADVENTUROUS study. So today I believe it is the beginningof a beautiful adventure, I have finally started to look at myself and not to try to understand the work of others and buy itfrom mine, but if I hadn't done so it wouldn't have this double artistic and fashion value , for many scholars and experts infashion and art, in my work they see ART NOT FASHION, this I must say makes me feel better, because I know that Iwill still beable to express myself in some way and, I really like to think about how I worked to get to this after manyexperiences. I then believe that my work in fashion will not be fundamental or remembered, but my PATHOS and myLOVE for what I wanted to achieve will be remembered. I believe that my visionary and avant-garde work approachedwith the techniques of Upcycling and moulage will be remembered .However, I would really like to be remembered as the artist of poor fashion, by poor I mean fashion made with waste,with very few means, but with so much love for what I did, my clothes remind me of who I was, this is enough for me, Ijust hope that I will not be remembered as a designer with a bad character, given that finally at 50 I have decided to begina pathof analysis and rethinking of my thoughts, so yes I would like to be remembered as an example not of that personwith talent and with ugly character but, everyone remembers us as they want, it's all subjective. In short, I hope thatpeople draw from my clothes only the beauty of character that I have not been able to express out of fear and my owntraumas, and I hope that through them they can truly understand that together with character there is always the search forbeauty, and the desire to get to knoweach other, even by hurting yourself, too badly but, you can't change to pleaseyourself, which I almost always did, you have to change to please yourself. Sorry for these words of mine but, I believe that certain things can only be said afterwards. ... Thank you

What would you write in a letter to your future self?

In a letter to myself I would first of all write a sentence by Pasolini as an introduction which reads this:

MY FAULT WAS AND IS THAT I HAVE NO REFERENCES, THAT I DO NOT HAVE TO BE ACCOUNTABLETO ANYONE, I ONLY REPRESENT MYSELF AND I ALWAYS SPEAK IN A PERSONAL CAPACITY, ALMOST EXPERIENCING IN MY BODY THE THINGS I SAY

However, I want to start from this and go on to say that MY PRICE WAS THEN LEARNING TO HAVEREFERENCES, HAVING TO BE ACCOUNTABLETO EVERYONE, I WANT TO REPRESENT EVERYONE, NOTJUST MYSELF, AND ALWAYS SPEAK NOT ONLY IN A PERSONAL CAPACITY, ALMOST LIVING THETHINGS OTHERS SAY IN MY BODY, BUT LEARNING TO CHOOSE WHAT TO LET IN AND WHAT TO LET OUT.

I wrote certain words in capital letters because they were very important to me.

Dear Paolo, in fact you will have made a lot of mistakes, you will have cried a little, laughed a lot, you will have worked alittle, you will have played a lot, but I hope you did everything truthfully, however Iam really happy with what I did,goodbye, we will meet again one day , and that day you will be ready.

Well done Paolo!

Interview by @mirawanderlust

Images courtesy of @paolodilandro

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