5 Things To Know About Karoline Vitto’s Body-Positive SS24 Show

Every season at the women’s shows in Milan, Dolce & Gabbana provide a platform for a young designer. This season, their gesture of goodwill – all expenses paid – went to Karoline Vitto, a young Brazilian designer based in London, whose practice is focused on the beauty and enhancement of the female body. Her work is a reaction to the body image she grew up with in Brazil as part of a local Y2K culture focused on a certain kind of physique to which she couldn’t relate.

Staged in the Dolce & Gabbana Casa building on Via Giuseppe Broggi, the show featured a body-positive cast. “We wanted a full curve cast. We didn’t want to have ‘sample size’ models,” Vitto explained. “We started from a size 10 [and went up] to a size 24. We had to fly a few girls in from London. My studio is based there, so in order to make these pieces we needed to start fitting some of the girls in London. We started much earlier than most brands.”

Vitto largely expresses herself in jersey and metal rings. The collection revolves around fluid deshabillé garments that followed the curve of the body and accentuated its contours through the addition of metal rings incorporated into the construction. “I love the malleability of jersey and the materiality of it, and working with it in terms of stretch. It’s something I like design-wise, also with the addition of metal,” she said.

After the show, Ashley Graham – who opened the show – hugged a crying Vitto. “You should be crying, it was incredible! We just made history!” the model told her before tuning to the reporters. “It feels normal. You want diversity? This is diversity. More designers should be doing this. We need more curves on the runway, we need to have this be the normal. If I’m feeling normal on a runway with this many girls, it means that there’s something that doesn’t feel normal on runways everywhere else.”

Backstage, Vitto was greeted by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. “This is the power of clothes. Keep going. Call me if you need anything,” Gabbana could be heard telling her. “For me, it’s very natural,” Vitto told the press. “It shouldn’t even be a question of why it’s important or not, it should just be. Because the majority of us are not sample size so we should have that representation on the catwalk. I just think it’s how it should be.”