Francesca Pagliara is a visionary fashion designer and the creative force behind the renowned brand, EVASIONE. With a passionate commitment to sustainability and innovation, Francesca has carved a unique niche in the fashion industry by transforming recycled plastic into stunning jewelry pieces. Her brand embodies the essence of artistry and conscientious design, offering a harmonious blend of eco-consciousness and elegance.
Words + Interview: Deborah Sapia @deborah_sapia
Drawing inspiration from the beauty of nature and the transformative power of upcycling, Francesca breathes new life into discarded materials, crafting them into exquisite statement pieces that capture the imagination. Each jewelry creation by EVASIONE reflects Francesca’s dedication to environmental stewardship and her vision of a more sustainable future in fashion.
Art direction + Photography: Deborah Sapia @deborah_sapia
Through her pioneering work with recycled plastic, Francesca not only redefines conventional notions of luxury and style but also advocates for mindful consumption and ethical production practices. Her designs symbolize a harmonious fusion of creativity and sustainability, embodying a conscious approach to beauty and adornment.
Francesca’s journey as a fashion designer and sustainable advocate is a testament to her unwavering determination to make a positive impact through her artistry. With EVASIONE, she invites individuals to embrace a new perspective on fashion, one that celebrates the transformative potential of recycled materials and the intrinsic beauty of sustainable design. Francesca’s bold vision and commitment to environmental responsibility continue to inspire and shape the future of sustainable fashion.
IN CONVERSATION WITH FRANCESCA PAGLIARA
Hi Francesca, tell us a little about yourself and your journey as a designer and artist.
Hello 33Magazine!
I’m Francesca Pagliara and my alter ego is called Eva.
She was born and raised in the city of Bologna since 1994, but with undeniably Apulian origins. Ostuni is my second home, Earth is my refuge where life flows slowly, where time does not exist. She graduated from the artistic high school of Bologna and then moved to Milan, she graduated in Interior Design from the European Institute of Design and specialized in Visual Merchandising at NABA in Milan.
I currently and again live in Bologna, I work for Zara, but my true fuel is the love for art, for my life partners and for my creatures. I believe that art and life are the same thing, person and artist too. Art has always been part of me, in one way or another, but before I was able to give it a voice I had to shed my skin over and over again, working on the concept of externalizing something that is inside, that is inside of me. All this to understand how this layer of being could take shape, if there is a shape. Art has always been the means that has allowed me to exorcise my discomfort, moving from manual drawing to sculpture during high school, from the creation of a concept to sketching and 3D creation. At university I lost myself in the world of graphics and then came to understand the importance of creating spaces and products on a scale, spending hours in the modeling laboratory in Via Bezzecca.
My love for the project later led me to collaborate with various graphic, design and event organization studios.
On the other hand, fashion has always been a great passion of mine, but also something that has been internalized to the point of becoming part of my being. A passion cultivated since I was a child, since grandmother Anna, a seamstress, compulsive collector of lace doilies and seeker of hidden treasures, took me with her to the markets, to train my eye in recognizing those “precious things”, in the midst of a lot of junk. She really taught me what it means to give value and new life to what others, for one reason or another, decide to throw away.
For me, art is also a ferryman, a means that accompanies me and directs me towards those increasingly conscious choices, which usually clash with the frenetic rhythms and the perennial performative state to which we are forced to constantly subject ourselves. And therefore anger, anger and frustration for that sense of impotence that arose within me when I came into direct contact with the world of fashion, first with the backstage of the Milanese fashion shows and subsequently working in the world of retail. My personal sensitivity towards the phenomenon of fast fashion has grown more and more as I have been able to experience firsthand that sick system, to say the least, based exclusively on the speed of production and consumption. And I understood that in the end we all pay the hidden price of this system, in the form of environmental damage and the loss of workers’ human rights. It is a chain of discomfort that starts from the root and branches out to the ends. And I’m part of it.
When was your project born? What is the meaning of the word EVASIONE?
It was during the Pandemic that the need to do with one’s hands became a necessity again, a bit like when I was a child and drawing was a salvation. I was able to savor the slow life, I began to find peace in that silence that allows you to hear better what happens inside and outside. I started taking care of plants, practicing yoga every day, eating simple food and making and creating with what I had, finally freeing my creative streak by doing with my hands. It is in this research that I encountered EVA (ethylene vinyl acetate), a plastic copolymer with great properties. It is precisely in this period that the “EVA-SIONE” project began to take shape.
Thanks to the opportunity provided to me by BackBo Hub, a small virtuous company from Bologna, I had the opportunity to get my hands dirty and study materials and their properties in depth, finding infinite potential in plastic.
EVA is the name of the copolymer and the word “EVASION” was chosen precisely for the idea of escaping, breaking away from the basic patterns of a corrupt system where overproduction is the fulcrum. Why not create with what we already have? Especially in the fashion sector which is currently the second most polluting in the world after the oil sector. Hence the need to recover EVA by changing its intended use, no longer just industrial, but in this case in the fashion-accessories sector.
The idea is to use the EVA material for an ephemeral use, such as that of a fashionable jewel, and to be able to combine it with an object that is not ephemeral, but which lasts an eternity and for an eternity can be recycled without producing further material, using existing material. The life cycle is infinite. And here the waste, what has always been considered to be thrown away, becomes beauty: an old upper is transformed into a jewel, but in the newest conception of the term.
– Francesca Pagliara
How does the research process work?
I work with the material in the same way I act on my life experience, through my will I try to give shape to the invisible that is within me. Color and density are always closely linked to the expressive need of my internal world. Unusual objects, creatures of the mind, primitive forms rooted in my unconscious that want to respond to that cry for help from the Earth. The jewel creatures come to life through spontaneous gestures in which the interaction between shape, color and density are always closely linked to the expressive need of my internal world. It is bringing to the surface a hidden and confused depth that cannot otherwise emerge into consciousness through a creative act. This is where art allows me to overcome the limit of my psychic skin and of communicate your personal cry for help to the outside world. My work is a hope, it is an invitation to enter that space of reflection where you can finally change your skin, mentality, habits and… intended use. In this way we would act on hyperproduction by facilitating entry into a perspective aimed at the reuse of materials. EVA is infinitely recyclable.
Who or what inspires you?
The workmanship is influenced by the organic forms that inspire it, water, the trunks of Apulian olive trees, reminiscent of matter that is organized in all its aspects, liquid, fluid, amorphous.
Here is my search for a form that intimately connects the organic to the inorganic, which is a place of union between organic matter and what is not organic. What inspires the creation of my jewels is driven by this desire, by the continuous attempt to reproduce and get closer to nature, but using materials that have nothing to do with it, but which are actually potentially harmful and harmful to the Planet. The idea of being able to infinitely recycle this polymer is linked precisely to this ecological and artistic desire to experiment on an unusual material for this type of use, following in the footsteps of the great master Gaetano Pesce and the artist who most influenced my childhood, Alex Angi. It was he who, by coincidence, gave me part of the waste that I now use for my current works. EVA finds numerous applications in different sectors: in the footwear industry, it is commonly used for producing shoe soles thanks to its excellent shock absorption properties, we find it again in the sports equipment industry or in the creation of toys and food packaging, because it is completely non-toxic. In short, a waste material that is really easy to find.
The goal is to be able to connect companies, but also small businesses. They produce this waste material so that it can be directly recovered and used, in this case, in the world of art and fashion, which meet here. Unusual objects, creatures of the mind, primitive forms rooted in my unconscious that want to respond to that cry for help from the Earth. The jewel creatures come to life through spontaneous gestures in which the interaction between shapes brings to the surface a hidden and confused depth that cannot emerge into consciousness except through a creative act. This is where art allows me to overcome the limit of my psychic skin and of
communicate your personal cry for help to the outside world. My work is a hope, it is an invitation to enter that space of reflection where you can finally change your skin, mentality, habits and intended use. In this way we would act on hyperproduction by facilitating entry into a perspective aimed at the reuse of materials. EVA is infinitely recyclable.
Share with us more details about why you call your process ‘paciugo’ and what tools do you use for your creations?
“Paciugo” is a term that I often heard as a child and which I link to a specific period of my childhood. I was frequently accused by my parents of being naughty, at the table, in the garden, in the bathroom, but what I remember is that for me that moment was so satisfying, so liberating that the reproach entered heavy in one ear and came out lightly in the other.
Here, for me, pacifying means freeing oneself.”
– Francesca Pagliara
The “paciugo” translates into Italian as “disgusting mixture of several substances, mostly soft or semi-liquid” and it was automatic to use it for my creative process. It is as if the rings narrate my birth starting from an embryonic dimension, because that very fluid material, without a precise form, is the basis of the project and it is precisely there that I want to place myself, in an imprecise form, in continuous movement, like the epidermis which is the point of contact between inside and outside, between man and the world, in perpetual evolution. The medium I use to model EVA is heat, given by high temperatures. In the first phase I use a hot hair dryer and then precision tools, such as a soldering iron. I use wooden or metal bases and cylinders, of various sizes, to ensure that the material does not attack and on which I can manually shape and set the various gems. I try to use only waste materials, for example for the coloring I recovered old unused eyeshadow palettes from myself and various friends, as well as stones, all found in hidden drawers in family homes.
What do you think about sustainability and how can we raise public awareness about it?
With the “EVASION” project I try to express my despair towards a society founded on the economy of exploitation of a planet that makes us hear its cry for help more and more every day. I believe that art in all its forms today necessarily has the task of leading the public to reflect on the theme of sustainability, not in a broad sense, but with actions that bring real changes in the production mentality, not only niche, but especially mass.
”I believe that the solution to raise awareness is to start these practices from the micro to get to the macro.” – Francesca Pagliara
Words + interview: Deborah Sapia @deborah_sapia
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