The guest speaker for the lecture was Angelo Fusco Balmain Paris of Levi Strauss Jean. Angelo is an NTU alumni, with a BA (Hons) in Fashion Design. She narrated how her journey started from Speedo – to her developing her final project and winning the ‘ARTS THREAD x LEVI’ competition in 2015. This secured her a job role in Levis Strauss in San Francisco as a designer. She is now a Senior Denim Designer at Balmain. She is inspired by fashion archives, local museums, vintage textures, and silhouette. Angelo lived and worked in London, San Francisco and now Paris.
Angelo is responsible for all woven and denim products, and worked with her team to put together an exquisite and jaw-dropping designs to be seen on Lil Nas X & Kylie Jenner. The company started looking be relevant to their young consumers since 2013/2014
As part of her sustainability efforts, in 2016 she introduced the use of Hemp – which is still in use. She has also researched the use of Soy Plant for yarn, useful for light weight to heavy weight fabrics. The fiber offers cashmere and silk soft material, with breathable and moisture wicking properties. She said Soy is preferred to cotton, courtesy of less water intake for growth of crop and fabric production.
Levi started collaborating with designers such as Air Jordan; which is the first time Levi went sporty, also with Pika Pika.
As a fan of experimental ideas, I like the part where they played around with cut up old recycled jeans, raw materials from Hemp and white unbleached recycled materials to form a design – as the ideas there was to form 3 tone design. Most times, beautiful works are created that way.
In the pursuit of denim expertise, Angelo pursued an MSc in University of Manchester, specializing on textile engineering and technology. During her studies, she gained knowledge how yarn can be woven to allow it conduct energy. This distinguished her as a designer.
Looking at all her journey thus far, would you say that the pandemic era helped a lot of designers and companies to develop and grow widely in the digital space?
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