In Conversation with Fashion Designer Carolina Dalfo
Words by Chloe Olewitz
After studying fashion and textile design in Buenos Aires, designer Carolina Dalfó got her start working for local brands and producing runway shows at several seasons of Buenos Aires Fashion Week. “We were trained to approach design from a very experimental point of view and to understand fashion as a universe beyond clothes,” Dalfó says of her studies in Buenos Aires. “We were challenged to create clothes without necessarily making them look aesthetically pleasing but prioritizing their capacity to carry meaning and turning them into tools for individual and collective communication.”
Dalfó transported this mindset with her to New York when she moved to pursue a Masters in Critical Theory and the Arts at the School of Visual Arts. She challenged preconceived notions about fashion in her thesis, “A Defense of Fashion,” and continues to challenge stereotypes in the work she does as a designer working with brands like Robert Geller, Opening Ceremony, and Lululemon. She’s currently on the men’s knits team at Polo Ralph Lauren, and she’s looking forward to relaunching her brand, DALFO, soon: “It’s going to be good,” she says. Through it all, Dalfó believes that fashion is about more than the clothes we wear—it’s about how we use our everyday armor to respond to what’s happening in the world around us.
Chloe Olewitz: How did moving from Buenos Aires to New York impact your design work?
Carolina Dalfo: When moving to New York, I knew I had a lot to learn, but I’ve always been a hard worker. To begin with, I had to learn all technical words in my second language and build a network and friendships in a city where I didn’t know anyone. The journey wasn’t easy, but if there is something I’ve always been confident about it’s my professional skills and my capacity to absorb knowledge and tailor it to my own design process. The closer we get to a subject, the easier it is for us to spot its faults, and that happened to me with design. I’ve had my fair share of frustrations and disappointments, but I never stopped believing in myself. Ironically, I think a big incentive to keep growing my career despite the obstacles is being far away from home. I wouldn’t want all that effort to go to waste, so I don’t take anything for granted.
Tell us about founding Latinx Alumni Together in the Arts (LATA).
LATA was created last year as a platform to connect with fellow Latinx and Hispanic members of the alumni community at the School of Visual Arts. The main reason why I began thinking about a group like this was simply to take a break from the new and go back to the known. I thought if I was feeling that way, maybe I wasn’t the only one. That turned out to be true. SVA listened and helped me connect with other alumni who were interested, and together we created LATA.
In last year’s hostile climate toward the unknown and foreign, LATA was important because it was a source of comfort, a safe zone. We were hoping to find common ground when we all first met—that’s why we created LATA in the first place. However, after a couple meetings, it was evident to me that it is our differences that fuel individual curiosity, outlining the path for growth. If we approach every single interaction we have from this point of view, ultimately, we’ll be able to understand each other better and grow together, not only respecting but looking forward to our differences.
How do you see your community work interacting with your work in fashion?
The mechanisms of bringing a community together and working in fashion are pretty similar. The topic of diversity is always at the center. The diversity of perspectives I found talking to LATA members is the same approach I found most successful when creating a design team. When designing, several points of view and varied opinions make the product better. I will forever stand by that. Interacting with different eyes invites us to look and question different things, lowering the chance to oversee potential design faults. That is exactly what LATA is. The communion of individualities that blend with each other and create new points of contact and conversation.
How do you see fashion helping inspire change in society?
I like to think of my job as a translator’s job. I turn social shifts into clothes that become available tools for people to communicate. The use and change of clothes through time eventually creates an archive of history. Translators take one language and convert it into a different code. My job is to find big social movements, interpret them and make clothing that works as a mirror of their essence. In my experience, a big misunderstanding about fashion is that it’s a shallow practice that chases unstable trends in favor of profit.
Fashion is an industry and of course it needs to be profitable, but fashion as a system is bigger than that. Trends are not randomly picked—they are the result of carefully conducted analysis that discovers macro trends of human behavior and social practices and filters them down into micro trends that inform design. That is why fashion is always changing, because so are we.
Every designer has their own approach to how they start a design project. An important aspect of my approach is paying attention to the state of the world and how and why we wear what we wear. Why are there more genderless products on the market? How will it impact the youth seeing a male singer wearing a dress on the cover of a fashion publication? What will change after being isolated for so long and how will this impact people’s understanding of clothing? Fashion is not exclusively about clothes, it’s a reaction to worldwide stimuli.
How has the work you do—or the way you do it—changed during the pandemic?
2020 has had a huge impact on my work. The world is going through such dark times and yet despite all the horror and uncertainty, there are people showing up for each other, pushing the agenda for a more equal world, believing that we can be better. It would be absurd for me and anyone in a creative field to ignore the beautiful resistance of humanity in the midst of worldwide chaos. This pandemic gave me some much-needed time to think and reflect on moments such as adventures with friends, relationships, family vacations and holidays and personal achievements. These small memories of joy and happiness were much needed in the middle of the pandemic and they were incredibly humbling. I’m a different designer now because I’m not the same person I was early this year.
How are you different when it comes to your health?
I’ve been working on eating healthier and drinking more water for a year or so. I indulge in my favorite ice cream or pasta when I’m watching a show or simply craving them, but I’ve incorporated a lot of vegetables into my daily meals. I’m actually really proud of that! Another thing I’ve been trying to do, which has proven to be really hard, is being mindful of the way I talk to myself about my body. Women are often so scrutinized about their looks; it’s exhausting to only be thinking about what I don’t like about my body constantly. The truth is, everyone has things they don’t completely like about themselves, but learning to be gentler to myself has been really important for me lately.
How do you practice self-care?
I love cooking! Making something delicious after a long day is one of my favorite ways to self-care. There is a certain peace that comes with it. It helps me clear my head and completely focus on something else. Plus, I like trying new things, so it’s never boring. Another practice I’ve perfected through the time is saying “no” to things I don’t want to do. It’s surprisingly hard to put something that seems so easy in practice, but I try not to do that anymore.
Do you think fashion factors into self-care?
It’s amazing the role clothing has in self-care, mostly because we live our lives in it. We are surrounded by objects of design that enhance the human experience, including clothing and accessories. Clothing is about self-expression not only in the sense that it reflects our immediate interior state, but because this reflection implies a knowledge of the self that we base our dress choices on. We have to know who we are to accurately present ourselves, and who we are is always under construction. Fashion should be about experimentation because it is about finding the perfect balance—regardless of what that balance looks like—that makes us feel like ourselves.
I think another way to call what happens when the inside and outside are aligned is confidence. When our clothes and ornaments honestly replicate who we are, we feel strong, empowered and proactive. Needless to say, there is a sense like a weight has been lifted off our shoulders when we realize that the experimentation with clothing is entirely up to the dresser. We let go of the bounding box of unnecessary and unrealistic standards and templates of how a certain kind of person should dress. This liberation is an act of self-care because we put ourselves first, learning that clothing is a process of self-discovery that leads to a more balanced spirit.
Without a doubt, fashion and the search for that balance contributes to self-care. Personally, my feelings toward myself have been influenced by my clothing choices plenty of times. I’ve felt insecure when I wasn’t comfortable with what I was wearing, when I felt like my armor wasn’t protecting or representing me enough and I’ve felt hopeful and powerful when I was happy with my choices.
