(ENG) Carla Pontes grew up between ballet lessons and her family’s textile business, nurturing a strong artistic sense and a technical knowledge of fabrics and production methods. Driven by a fascination with design’s process-oriented thinking and the conceptual power of art, she graduated in Product Design (2008) between Porto and Milan, before studying Fashion Design at CITEX/MODATEX (2011).
Just months after completing her studies, she was one of the winners of the Portugal Fashion competition, which gave her the opportunity to present her first collection in 2012 on the BLOOM young designers platform and at the Young Designers Fashion Shows in Madrid. Further awards followed, reinforcing her commitment to developing her eponymous brand, which maintained a regular presence on the national and international Portugal Fashion circuit until 2019.
In 2016, she co-founded carpo studio, a design and architecture studio where she is responsible for fashion design developments for uniforms, costumes, vestments, and visual identity, collaborating with projects across music, dance, theatre, and cinema. She frequently works with artists and artisans on studio projects that combine her authorial language with cross-disciplinary concepts. Currently, and since 2014, the designer has also been a lecturer and trainer at Modatex Porto, teaching in the areas of project development, patternmaking, and sustainability.
Her creative process explores the relationship between textiles and three-dimensional bodies, refining forms under the influence of a carefully considered minimalist language. The unnecessary is eliminated and detail is elevated. Throughout her career, she has demonstrated a growing commitment to sustainability, with eco-design principles becoming a central driving force in her most recent work.
She approaches fashion thinking beyond the product itself. To better present concepts and processes, she has explored relationships between fashion and video, installation, and performance, progressively transforming—and at times replacing—runways with gallery spaces.
