The CSM graduate Italian designer has spent the past five years creating a world of whimsy for Dreaming Eli. But with SS27, she’s also interested in the not-so-sweet side of things.

“The theme of this collection is a bit of a journey, right?” Elisa Trombatore starts. We’re speaking from her East London studio, three days before the kick-off of London Fashion Week, as details are still being meticulously applied to her latest creations and packed individually to be transported to St Bartholomew’s Hospital in West London, where the show will take place. As someone who’s never designed a garment in their life, it’s easy to imagine the last-minute nature of these final touches destabilising its creator. But Elisa is in her element. Fresh-faced, excited, her long, pointy nails immaculately done, I’m watching a rockstar fine-tune her set, knowing the crowd won’t be disappointed.

It’s an exciting chapter for the Dreaming Eli founder. For the past five years, since graduating from Central Saint Martins, she’s been establishing herself as one of the most exciting designers to emerge from the city. Lace for days, impossibly high platforms, an incredible mastery of corsetry and an attitude handed down to models who always seem to float down the runway with delicacy and candour. In her softness, Eli honours the magic of the female body and the feminine, giving new meaning to sexy. Now, as she dives back into her Sicilian roots as the starting point for SS27, she sits down with Wonderland for a deep dive. Keep scrolling to read our conversation as she dissects “Dreamers in Exile”…

What’s your starting point for the collection?

The collection starts in Sicily, so it’s very much about [my] childhood and that time of life where everything seems possible and you feel immortal. There’s something about Sicily that makes you believe that this is still real, it’s the air that feels lighter and warmer and a time that feels frozen, that moves slower. The architecture is full of history and it’s so rich, the colours are so white, and creamy, it feels like being in a dream 

And that’s what the collection is about. It’s about childhood dreams versus the development of them and the more you go through the collection the more you experience the growth. The looks become  about breaking through and breaking free — about the moment in life when all this beauty starts sitting tight with you, and you’re discovering yourself and figuring out who you are. So we get to the third phase of the collection which is about the London life: the reality, the techno, the raves. It’s about finding yourself, which can be painful, but there’s also beauty in it.

I find it interesting because so much of what you do is whimsical and sweet. How do you balance that with heaviness? How do you integrate those worlds?

I feel like the contrast is where I live. I don’t really try to balance the two. The more the two things are fighting each other, the more interesting the result is. The whole collection is about this balance between going super deep into that whimsical phase – with so many laces, textures, distressing and painted vintage corsetry — and then going fully into the other world. I think that’s what makes it interesting.

Your question actually brings me back to the ending of the collection, which is about finding the perfect balance between those two worlds. You’re still dreamy and whimsical, still connected to those childhood dreams, but you’re also real. You take all these different pieces of yourself and stitch them back together.

So at the end of the show, it’s really about that balance between the worlds. There’s the vintage feeling alongside all these techno elements. We’re going really deep into the contrast between the two.

It feels like a beautiful representation of where you are in life right now.

Exactly. I think the phase I’m in right now is more about being able to balance both. To still be dreamy and somewhat detached from reality because, who cares about reality? We build our own reality. But also making your real experience of life matter and getting the most out of what you’re called to face every day.

Do you find it hard to come up with a theme for a collection?

No, absolutely not. That’s the easy part. Each collection is sort of like my diary.

You mentioned before that this feels very Sicily to you, which is where you grew up. How do those references materialise to you in this collection?

[In Sicily,] you walk around and see these beautiful, broken buildings that are 100 years old. Nobody fixed them. Nobody touches them, but they still exist. They’re broken and they’re beautiful, and there’s something very unrealistic about them. I feel like they’re completely disconnected from reality. That’s why I was drawn to them. It’s literally the opposite of perfection.

There’s an element of London to that, too.

One hundred per cent. If Sicily is where I started, London I where I found myself. One of my favourite stories to tell about when I just moved to London the first project I had at CSM. I was this very shy, Sicilian girl, long black hair, wearing skinny jeans and they asked me to forget who I was and live for three weeks like my alterego. “Pick anything you want, but you need to live as this [new identity] 24/7. You need to go to the gym like this and to the supermarket while filming and documenting this new life…”

So I bleached my hair, wore pink latex and became this Barbie girl. I was Barbie for three weeks. I was going to the gym in platform heels and being super free, you know? After that, I realised I could literally be whoever I wanted.

Going back to your question before, the collections are very connected to this because every collection is sort of like my personal diary. It’s a way of expressing what I’m feeling and what I’m experiencing. That’s why I always say the brand is a testament to my experience of the world as a woman. Not just my general experience, but where I am right now, what I’m experiencing and how I can translate that into something that other people can relate to.

One collection was completely about sexual freedom. Another was about questioning myself and questioning what I wanted. Another was fully romantic and about experiencing love. This one is a very personal collection because it feels like a bit of a circle. Maybe it’s because I’m becoming 30. I don’t know.

I’m with you there. That was actually going to be my question. What do you think happened between your last collection and now for you to feel so grounded? This feels almost like a time capsule.

I think it’s quite interesting. My last collection was all about women — love for women, supporting women, this network of friendships, lovers, and everything we have that actually builds our lives. At 31, I feel like my collections are becoming more about understanding myself. You start to see what the key points of your life are.

After last season, it had been such a tough year fashion-wise. There was so much work and so many things happening, so I took quite a long break. I went back to Sicily for about a month, and it was literally like re-experiencing everything. It’s quite interesting going back to where everything started, because you make so many connections. I was like, “Oh my God, literally, this texture [in the wild] looks exactly like my texture.” You realise where things were coming from, even subconsciously.

But it’s also about finding yourself as a woman now versus who you were when you were walking those streets and experiencing the world for the first time. I was thinking about how important it is to keep that feeling, even though we have all this weight of reality. It was an interesting moment because I’ve been through a lot of processes.

And when it comes to the craftsmanship of the clothes, there’s so much that you put into this through very special techniques. Was there anything you wanted to try differently for this collection where you thought, “I’m throwing myself into it”?

I think starting with the theme. You always see a bit of Sicily in everything I do. But this season, I really wanted to explore these two worlds at opposite extremes. In terms of the Sicily part, I was really trying to explore this vintage feeling – clothes that have been worn, that have something to say. Again, going back to the Sicilian buildings: you walk past them and think, “These windows have so many stories to tell.” I wanted to recreate that feeling in garments. So we’ve done a lot of bleaching and dyeing. Everything is hand painted, all these layers, and there are going to be even more layers. I wanted to create this feeling of something that has been worn, that has a story to tell. It’s a bit dirty, but there’s beauty in it. It’s a dream dirtied by reality.

It’s almost like finding one of these pieces in a box that was stored away somewhere and thinking, “Oh my God, imagine what people have lived in this.”

Exactly. And I want the Dreaming Eli woman to wear this and connect these dots, almost like finding all these little pieces of yourself and putting them away in a drawer, in a box, or wherever, and then wearing them proudly and finding the beauty in them. The other element, more on the techno side, is this tattoo technique. I startrd by looking at decorative motifs carved ages ago on the Sicilian churches and redesigned them with a tribal tattoos aesthetic that would resonate more with the raving London scene. The result of this mix has been screen printed onto the clothes making them into a second skin.

What are your hopes and dreams for the people who watch the show? What do you want them to take away from it?

I just want them to feel it all. My collections are all about the emotions. It’s not about the clothes. We don’t need any more clothes in this world. What we need is art, and moments that move you. I want them to be moved. I want them to be touched by it as much as everything this creates touches me.

At the end of the day, what this process is about is growth. There are 26 characters, 26 different women in different phases of their lives. Even at the show, each model will have her own walk. We cast the models based on whatever feelings they have, and how connected they are to the woman I’m trying to represent. So, yeah, I just hope they see a little bit of themselves in it as well. All of them. I hope they find a bit of that feeling in the collection.

Words – Sofia Ferreira