Cardo - rethinking wool’s value
Category: Apparel
Competitions: Fashion Competition 2025
Cardo is a fashion and material research project that begins with wool, not just as a fiber, but as a territory, a cultural memory, and a system of care. It started with a question: what happens when a material that once shaped entire communities is now discarded, devalued, or classified as waste? Throughout this project, I worked with discarded wool from the Ripollesa sheep, a native Catalan breed raised in mountainous regions and overlooked by the textile industry for its coarseness. Through felting, machine knitting, crochet, and biomaterials made from agar-agar and gelatin, I explored how these fibers could be revalued through design. Most garments in the collection begin with the shape of the square referencing ancestral outerwear traditionally worn by gauchos and shepherds, like the poncho, chiripá, and kapusai. This limitation became a conceptual framework: a way to reflect on repetition, simplicity, and slow construction. The project also integrates digital and analog techniques: from CLO3D moulages to laser engraving on felt, natural dyeing with yerba mate, and accessories made with a 3D pen, some of which are now being cast in metal using lost-wax methods. Cardo is ultimately about transformation and care, of both, material and tradition. It reclaims forgotten fibers, but also honors the hands that keep these practices alive. Every piece embracing its imperfections, is a gesture toward a slower way of making and dressing.
