EFFEI Clothing · Latina, Italy
The cloth decides
EFFEI is an Italian clothing label that starts with the cloth: hand-painted Bogolan, Otomí embroidery, batik and Indian block prints, bought from small artisan workshops. Founder Aurora Circelli decides in her lab in Latina what each fabric becomes.
Most fashion starts with a drawing and then goes looking for a fabric. At EFFEI the drawing comes last. Aurora Circelli starts designing only once she can touch the cloth, and it rarely happens the other way round.
A prototype, then the lab
Bogolan, the hand-painted cloth of West Africa, became the Bogo corset, with nylon bows tied at the shoulders. From Mexico comes Otomí cloth, embroidered stitch by stitch, which she lined in organic cotton and cut into a vest.
The house print, Alavida, is stamped onto cotton in India with carved blocks, so every corset made from it comes out slightly different.
She makes the first version of each piece herself, from a simple sketch on paper, then hands the prototype to someone who can sew it properly. EFFEI is three people. One-off pieces, and the ones that take longest, are made in the label's own lab in Latina; the rest go to larger workshops elsewhere in Italy. Because some of the fabrics are old, a single piece can take up to fifteen days.
Each collection in the shop is named after where its cloth comes from, such as Postcards from India and Postcards from Mexico.
