ABOUT

Let me tell you the story of how all of this came to be.

I’m a fashion designer, I’m a multimedia artist, I’m an art historian, a little socially awkward and a weird – but fairly stylish – amalgamation of nerd and geek! Oh, and worst of all… I’m a millennial woman. This should explain a lot of the scattered ideas you saw on the website.

I decided to go into business for myself. At first, I thought about exclusively working as a freelance fashion designer, but I felt it could be very limiting. I have a lot of ideas that I want to bring to life and I want to be able to share them with more than just individual clients.

With kiaro’skuro I am designer, seamstress, artist, social media manager, web designer, customer service and everything else.

As an artist, designer and historian I am always creating different things via mixed media that don’t conventionally mix together but they make up all of me!

I started this business to have the freedom to pursue all of my heart’s desire through the many skills I have accumulated over the years. 

The work is for those who value handcrafted quality and thoughtfully designed items that allow your life to be as stress free as possible!

So, this is not about niching down, this is about embracing all parts of you too!

Well, I make many things. And I do all of them on my own, it’s just me.

I design and sew handbags from rescued deadstock fabrics and end of rolls usually sold in coupons. The fashion industry – fast fashion and luxury – is responsible for a lot of waste and pollution. In an effort to reduce wastefulness and make sure those fabrics do not end up in landfills I decided to try to exclusively buy deadstock fabrics for my creations in an attempt at giving them a new life. The beauty in this initiative is that stocks are limited. I can only make a small number of items from the same fabric; which means only you and a handful of people would own that bag!

What can be more luxurious than a handmade, eco-responsible and limited edition design bag?

I create objectively hilarious and sometimes unhinged t-shirt designs that are printed, packaged and shipped by Printful. The idea of print on demand is to not have stock and reduce wastefulness as much as possible in an effort to be as sustainable as possible. The idea of the designs, well, we all have different coping mechanisms for our day-to-day struggles; one of mine is dark humour and sarcasm. So I thought I’d share that.

I also offer hand drawn digitally downloadable colouring pages. I love drawing, I love colouring, I love choosing one design and not a whole book! Colouring knows no age or gender, it’s a relaxing and mindful exercise that allows your brain to release creativity and stress. Once you download it, it’s yours to print as many times as you want!

I know you’ll see the limited edition crochet goods; I have a good reason for that I promise! You see, I binge crochet and end up with loads of goods that I can’t possibly house and I can’t gift people more crochet, I reached my quota of crochet gifts. So, they are yours to choose from! Go ahead and take your pick!

kiaro’skuro is a rewrite of the Italian word “chiaroscuro” which directly translates to “light-dark” in English and “claire-obscure” in French.

It is a painting technique about the balance between light and dark and how to bring bold and daring contrasts onto the canvas. It was popularised by one of my all-time favourite Italian painters: the master of chiaroscuro Michael Angelo di Caravaggio himself.

It puts two extremes together in a strong statement, there is beauty in darkness and it’s etched with light.

• Mindfulness
• Craftsmanship
• Sustainability
• Exclusivity
• Feminism
• Human rights

And of course, the healing power of creative self-care.