Fashion as an exoskeleton of the psyche

Have you ever put on a coat and felt yourself arrive? Your shoulders settle differently. A certain courage returns. You recognise a part of yourself you had almost forgotten was there.

I am Camilla Wellton. I began making clothes when I was five, and I still think of them as the exoskeleton of my psyche. I give an inner feeling a shape I can step into. Then the garment begins another life with the woman who wears it, who brings her own desires, memories and way of moving through the world.

Come closer. There is much more inside a garment than its silhouette.

The Fire Collection

Short silhouettes, generous sleeves, a collar that changes your whole presence. The Fire has no interest in being timid.

Explore The Fire

The Awakening Collection

In The Awakening, I set a precise waist against the extravagance of a sleeve. A silhouette can hold more than one mood.

Explore The Awakening

The Rise Collection

My sculptural coats gather close, then open as you move. The Rise is about what a shape can let you feel.

Explore The Rise

My name is
Camilla Wellton

I began making clothes at five, long before I could explain why I needed them. I knew only that a garment I had imagined and made could help me feel more like myself. Years later, I recognised that impulse as a kind of self-love: the pleasure of giving a desired feeling a body.

I am a Swedish and French Caribbean designer from Stockholm. Yoga and meditation have accompanied me since I was fifteen, and science fiction has kept my imagination hospitable to impossible things. One practice returns me to the body; the other asks what else a body, a life or a world might become. I bring both into my clothes. What you feel when you wear them is yours to discover.

Keep reading

The art of pattern cutting

Before there is a garment, there is a drawing that has yet to answer to gravity. I make my patterns, toiles and first samples myself because I want to stay close to that delicate negotiation. A seam must make sense on a moving body. A collar must be able to stand, fold and accompany the person inside it.

Sometimes the toile reveals something more beautiful than the drawing. That is why I love the work: making is not merely the execution of an idea. It is where the idea learns to live.

Read Before the garment

The Surreal Collection

Arms framed by unexpected openings, a hood that redraws the face. The Surreal invites a second look, and perhaps another way of being.

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The Breath Collection

Dresses, trousers and sculptural outerwear share a family resemblance. The Breath allows each piece its own temperament.

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The Water Collection

A pocket, an open neckline, the fall of a dark hem. In The Water, the smallest gesture can carry the whole feeling.

Explore The Water
Because I loved the cuts of her jackets. Classy and modern, for casual as well as business, at not the least the cuts are great no matter whether you’re thin as a nail, or rather slightly better endowed.
Pamela Ravasio

What we shape when we get dressed

Clothes make introductions before we do. They can bring us closer to ourselves, invite another person in or give us the quiet protection of a boundary. I write about those encounters in my Diary, alongside the making, the mistakes and the astonishing things a simple seam can do.

Begin with The exoskeleton of my psyche, or follow me into the studio with Before the garment. You may recognise something of yourself along the way.