What Happens to the Brand as Its Director Moves Into Contemporary Art?
We’re building a world where we’re not just about designing wearable garments inspired by art but creating the art itself.
At Antonina Poppy, we believe fashion can exist beyond the creation of wearable garments. It can be a form of artistic expression, a space where material, craftsmanship, concept and emotion come together. In this approach, fashion and contemporary art are not separate disciplines, but forces that can challenge and elevate one another.
Our shift towards contemporary art reflects a natural expansion of the Antonina Poppy universe: from designing what we wear to exploring ideas, objects and experiences that invite a different way of seeing.
A few words from Antonina Maria Pawlowicz, founder of Antonina Poppy, on this evolution and what the move towards contemporary art means for the brand:
“I sculpt a world inspired by timeless Roman sculpture, where soft fabric looks like carefully carved marble. Layers of white, ivory, grey, and coppery tones are shaped, almost creating an illusion of stone itself, and masquerading as marble. The sculptures have an aura of their own, a feminine power that resides in the draping, falling around an invisible body.”
Antonina describes her process as a dialogue between the softness and movement of fabric and the permanence and monumentality of sculpture. Rather than simply translating sculptural forms into fashion, she explores how fabric can evoke the weight, texture and presence of stone while retaining a distinctly feminine sense of movement and sensuality.
Speaking about her practice, Antonina further explains how this relationship between fashion, sculpture and the body continues to shape her creative process:
“It is in this way that I try to lend the power to the space it is in, with fabric that isn’t worn, but suspended in time itself. It seeks to be the central point of the space it lives in and draw eyes toward its movement. My work questions the contrast by placing incongruous forms or textures, or even concepts to uncover meanings that were waiting to be found in the fabric
Starting from plain white fabric, I explore the way it falls, folds and resists gravity to convey both lightness and power, both airiness and gravitas. I look constantly towards historic references, studying the way the classical masters of sculpture carve marble to flow around the body, in a way, doing the opposite, as I sculpt fabric to look stony, around air, evoking a feminine bodily presence where there isn’t one” explains Antonina Maria Pawlowicz.
We want to look beyond the rules of fashion, and combine the wearable and the sculpture, exploring soft fabric and moulding it into a solid piece.
Rather than separating fashion and art into distinct worlds, Antonina Poppy brings them together as part of one evolving universe. The same language of form, material, movement and emotion flows between the garments and sculptures, allowing each medium to inform and expand the other.
With the launch of its new sculptural collection, the brand takes this vision further, moving beyond fashion as something simply worn and creating a world to be experienced.