Meet Karoline Vitto, the Designer Carving Space for Curves in High Fashion

Karoline Vitto’s designs are all about contouring curves rather than concealing them – proving every body belongs in high fashion.

Raised in Caçador, Brazil, fashion was always a constant in Vitto’s life — her grandfather was a cobbler, and her grandmother a seamstress. It was precisely her family’s craftsmanship that led her to London, where she decided to hone her design skills at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art.

Growing up in Brazil, Vitto was surrounded by a strong swim culture predominantly focused on and exporting mostly “beach-ready” bodies. “I feel the whole body positivity movement has had a huge impact on how people perceive themselves and also how brands show their work,” Vitto tells Teen Vogue from inside her studio in Farringdon’s iconic Smithfield Market, a staple for the city’s culture, on a sunny Thursday afternoon in the middle of London Fashion Week.

The lack of size diversity in high fashion inspired Vitto to start her namesake brand in 2020, creating a safe space committed to celebrating and embracing the female form’s natural curves and folds without room for tokenization.

Today, her collections feature signature, sophisticated jersey dresses, and sculptural hardware – functioning as adjustable and fashionable features. Vitto's choice of flexible and conscious materials, as well as her women-led design processes, elevate the brand’s mission beyond a mere ethos, transforming it into its own movement.

Starting off at talent incubator Fashion East, Vitto’s unmistakable designs and approach have since gained her a spot in the British Fashion Council's (BFC) NewGen initiative alongside Chet Lo, Di Petsa, Tolu Coker, and Aaron Esh. The program is designed to support emerging designers with financial assistance, showcasing opportunities, and mentorship. In 2024, Vitto reached another milestone, becoming the first Brazilian female designer to be a semi-finalist for the LVMH Prize.

As she collects firsts, Vitto continues to grow her knowledge with her brand – crafting with inclusion, community, and sustainability in mind. Greeting us in her studio and surrounded by her creations, Teen Vogue sat down with the designer to talk about the influence of Brazil in her work, gradual upscaling, and what the future holds.

Teen Vogue: What can you tell us about growing up in Brazil and how the conversations around the body have evolved and inspired your work?

Karoline Vitto: They definitely have evolved. There was a lot of swimwear culture in Brazil in the ‘90s. Back then, fashion was about two big fashion weeks: São Paulo Fashion Week and Rio Fashion Week. Rio Fashion Week doesn't exist anymore, but at the time, it was a very strong fashion week for beachwear. I remember that being the conversation around bodies and being “beach body” ready. Also around that time, in terms of fashion, one of the biggest exports of Brazil was the models – Gisele Bündchen, etc. There wasn’t a lot of diversity, but the Brazilian models, actresses, and everyone we just saw in the media weren’t real reflections of what we saw when we went outside to the beach. There was this idea of this Brazilian body, but it felt really fabricated. Over the last 10 years, it's been changing, and I feel the whole body positivity movement has had a huge impact on how people perceive themselves and also how brands show their work. I feel like representation has really been evolving in Brazil, and I personally think it's been a good progression.

TV: Do you find that you reference Brazil in different ways in your designs?

KV: Yeah, definitely. I think there's always a degree of trying to be close to home when I design. That's why I like to go back to Brazil periodically to find inspiration, talk to people, or see clothes. I definitely have a need to be in that environment in order to feed myself creatively. Then I bring it here, and I make it a bit more London. And I try to adapt to the way that I live here. Now, I think I'm in a moment where I'm really trying to find where the Brazilian me and the London me meet.

TV: Could you tell us a little bit more about the materials you use and how you picked them?

KV: Yeah, materials research is such an important part of our process. I think people who don't work in fashion might not understand how restrictive it can be when you don't have the right materials or how tied designers are to the availability of the resources, especially when we work with jersey. Jersey isn’t an easy thing to source, like poplin or even wool in general. We are in a country that has an amazing wool industry, but with jersey, there are specific countries and specific markets that work really well with it. Jersey has so many challenges because of the stretchy nature of the material; there's a lot that can go wrong.

As an independent designer, sometimes you can't afford the minimums that are really big from some mills. At the beginning, we made the decision to use deadstock materials as much as possible. We did that for the first three collections, and as we grew a little bit, I started to realize that sometimes deadstock material only works for certain styles. If a style is really popular and the material is not available anymore, we can't reproduce it, and then we have to redevelop it using a different material.

With our spring-summer 2025 collection, we worked with a mill called PYRATEX. Lots of the fabrics had really innovative qualities, like a cooling-down effect on the fiber and, for example, a fiber made out of seaweed. Some really interesting research.

For the new collection, we also worked with Brazilian mills. This is the first time we are actually producing in Brazil with a factory there. For example, our denim is a no-wash denim, so it uses 75% less water than regular denim in its making process. We also work with a very lightweight jersey that has a dye-cleaning process where the dye is dyed in a circular way, so there's not so much water waste in the process. We try to really allocate lots of certifications for fibers. We worked with a lot of viscose, which is man-made biodegradable cellulosic fiber, which is a more sustainable alternative. We try to really comprehend different areas of the production, so when we make stuff from scratch, we do it as cleanly as possible.

TV: You collaborated with Brazilian jewelry designer Carlos Penna to create pieces for your collection. How did this come about?

KV: We met because of a shoot we did when I was doing my video for the LVMH Prize last year in Brazil. I was working with a local stylist for the video, and he introduced me to Carlos. We immediately got along.

Last April, I went to his studio, and we had a couple of days together where we just experimented. He had a long table full of different materials. Honestly, I had the best time because we work so similarly. We both just really enjoy holding onto the material, testing it, flipping it, putting it on the body. What I love about what he does is that the jewelry is flexible, so it adapts to the body. It's just very fitting to the work that we do as well. The material is one of his developments – so it's his own patent. He's a material nerd, which is something I love.

TV: Do you find it difficult to balance the sustainability, the aesthetic, and the actual practicality?

KV: I think that's kind of the million-dollar question. [Laughs.] I think in the beginning, my main goal was to make clothes that could allow for a beautiful image to be achieved. Because when I started the brand, it was in the middle of the pandemic, so I knew I had to push the image at first. Then, as things started to evolve and people started to buy it, my concern was wearability and trying to understand the fit and about making stuff that people could actually wear and in pieces that could also be carried through multiple collections and become staples of the brand. And then, obviously, the sustainability aspect of it, I think, always comes through the materials. We are such a small brand that I'm not worried about us making thousands of pieces because that's just not the case yet. But I also think it is about having the balance of really understanding if people are actually going to want to wear it because sometimes you might make something that you love, but if no one else loves it, what's the point?

TV: How do you do that?

KV: I think it's a mix. We try everything. Normally, there are three or four of us here, and we're all girls. The first test for me is just understanding how it feels on the body and how it looks. It's a very simple question. We look in the mirror and ask if we like it or not. There's always a different reaction when you know something is working: you look in the mirror, and your body language changes.

The second step is putting it on other people who are outside of the studio because, obviously in the studio, we've seen it so much. Then, the real test is always at the end, after the collection is shown. That’s where the more difficult part of the work begins in terms of product. That's when I go back to Brazil and work with my product developer there. She's the one who asks me very difficult questions such as, “Do you really think that this type of fastening won’t be too complicated? Imagine you're not there to explain it to the customer." Essentially, that's when we translate everything for retail.

TV: Regarding the process, your labels and site say the pieces are handmade here in London, but you’ve mentioned Brazil a lot. How do you balance what parts of the clothes are made in Brazil and what parts of it are made in England?

KV: Until last season and spring-summer 2025, everything was really handmade in London in this studio on these machines. Made to order. Now, with fall-winter 2025, this is the first time that we're actually having the factory work on pieces, which means we’re going to finally have stock, which I'm really excited about.

I think also something that lots of people don't maybe realize is that there's always going to be a human involved. The way that we developed this collection… The whole design process, toiling, and prototyping – was made in London. Everything was pre-tested in London and then taken to Brazil so they could translate it into a production-run approach. The limited range runs from 30 to 80 pieces per style, with some styles having more because we believe those are going to be the ones that sell the most. Because we have a bigger range of sizes, essentially, you don't have a lot of girls wearing the same thing.

We're still going to keep the “made to order” in London for customs or some more intricate or elaborate stuff like dresses and more elaborate pieces because the drape work is really important to me still.

TV: That is still fairly limited. So, it is gradual upscaling?

KV: Yes. I think that allows me to have control. There are just so many pieces of the puzzle that I had not considered. I had to open a company in Brazil, and then I had to open a sister company, too, because it was in a different state for production than the mother company.

Business-wise, there was so much to learn this year that I had no intention of learning. We kind of had to unlearn everything that we knew and relearn it in Brazil. There are so many regulations that were completely new to us, so it's been a learning curve. Now, the next step we're figuring out is distribution – export and import. So there are many different pieces of the puzzle, but I'm excited because I feel like it's the kind of groundwork for a stronger system for the brand to exist.

I really enjoy working on a small scale and testing everything on the mannequin – the atelier approach. It’s really tricky to move on from that and have to do a technical drawing just to provide the measurements to the factory. For me to provide the measurements to the factory, I have to go to the mannequin, drape, and test. So, it's almost like you have to do the process twice. Of course, I could just ballpark it, but that's not me.

TV: What can you tell us about this season’s collection, which you showed digitally.

KV: For this season’s collection, we're trying to establish some key codes of the brand in a way that feels a little bit more wearable and maybe less daunting. So, I've been trying to understand how different women would wear it. It's a little bit more democratic in terms of style, and it also brings some of the classics of the brand back – it reinvents some of the classics. I think it's about maybe making the brand feel a little bit more mature as well.

TV: You did the new collection film in Brazil. Why?

KV: It's basically a collaboration with one of the models, Fernanda. She's my friend, and she’s been a model on all of the projects we've ever done. She's this amazing documentary photographer, and we really wanted to do something together that didn't necessarily involve the fashion aspect of it.

We've been talking about doing something in the realm of image for a while, and then the opportunity came up for us to do the video together. She directed the movie and cast it as well – so it was her vision. Basically, it's Karoline Vitto as seen by her. It was good to see someone else's vision on it, especially with this new collection. I was interested in seeing how someone else's vision would interpret the brand. We shot in Rio, in a house in the middle of the forest, and the video was also inspired by the last time I was there because the place was just really still, and there was so much light, shade, and the sound of nature. It felt really spacey, and I just wanted to bring a bit of that to the film as well.

TV: Actually, for your last collection, you cast our previous Teen Vogue cover star, Yumi Nu. How did that come about?

KV: I met her online in 2021; at the time, she was starting to release her music, and she was using Visualizer for her new single. Her stylist reached out to me for a loan, and that's kind of how I got to know her. My casting director from spring-summer 2025 is friends with her, and there were lots of girls from America who really gracefully flew themselves in for the show – that was incredible. Lots of support from them, so I'm very grateful for the models. The Karoline Vitto girls.

TV: Finally, where do you see your brand in the future?

KV: One of my biggest goals was to start working with a factory and have stock and product. For so long, as a brand that does extended sizes, I felt that we were kind of limited. We had to work on a very, very, very tiny scale to exist otherwise it would not be possible. Now, having the opportunity to grow the system and process is great. Having the process systematized and making sure that it works so that if anyone else is thinking about doing the same thing, they can see that it's possible. There are other brands that are doing an amazing job as well in representation and in extending sizes. Whenever someone manages to do it, I'm like, "How did you do it?" I think every one of us finds a different solution for it. One of the goals for the future is to become one of the brands that manages to do it.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.