Zoye and Alen were the first things I made under my own name. I did not have the right to get them wrong.
I believe a thing carries the spirit it was started with. Whatever intention, whatever care goes into the beginning is what eventually reaches people — and it does not matter how much comes after. So the first two pieces were never only garments to me. They were the statement of how I see things, sent out to find the women who see them the same way.
The Shape of an Idea
If you look at Zoye and Alen next to each other, you will see the same two decisions in both: a defined waist, and volume through the sleeve.
Neither is decorative.
The waist is there because the shape of a woman's body is worth acknowledging rather than hiding. The volume is there for a different reason. It reads as strength from the outside — but from the inside it is something else: a generous, sheltered space where you can simply be yourself. A coat you can disappear into a little, without disappearing at all.
Those two ideas held in tension are, essentially, the brand. Everything I have made since comes back to them.
Six Months, and Perhaps a Hundred Revisions
Development took close to half a year. Part of that was inexperience — I had no real sense of how long any of it should take. Most of it was that I refused to stop while something still felt approximate.
Almost everyone told me the same thing: first pieces cannot be brought to the standard you are describing. Learn on them, release them, do better next time.
I understood the logic. I did not accept it.
So we changed the sleeve, and changed it again. Moved the waist by a few millimetres, then moved it back. Reconsidered how the shoulder sat, what the collar did when the coat was open, how the whole thing fell when a woman was walking rather than standing still. There must have been a hundred changes. Almost none of them are visible now — which is precisely the point. You only notice this kind of work when it has not been done.
In November 2025 the two pieces were finished, and we released them.
What I Took From It
That the advice was well meant and still wrong. That the difference between good and right is small, invisible, and worth every month it costs.
And that a garment is a way of saying something without speaking. I said what I believe about women in a waistline and a sleeve, and then waited to see who would answer.
Some of you did.
Daria
Founder & Designer