Away from the hype machine and PR bumpf of post-millennial fashion, Carola is a breath of fresh air, following her own path unflinchingly to make pieces with humour and integrity. Her loyal following wouldn’t have it any differently...

Dean Mayo Davies: Can you tell us how you would you describe your style, Carola?

Carola Euler: At the beginning! This is the question I hate the most. [Laughs]. I always say you should see the clothes. And if you don’t see the clothes then you’re not my customer! I know people always want me to say things like ‘oh it’s classic’ or it’s this or that, but I think there’s more to it...

DMD: Yes...

CE: I can say that the style I want to achieve is of something where it’s not all apparent at first sight. It looks easy but you look again and you discover the details.

DMD: The first time we spoke was a few years ago, regarding your Spring/Summer 2007 collection, where you did t-shirts that some press described as ‘oversized’, missing the acute point of what you were trying to do. It’s true that nothing is that simple, they were loose, yes but you if you looked carefully it was clear you were experimenting with new proportions, not just sizing the whole thing up. Has this handwriting become important to you?

CE: Yes. I’ve done this this season too, for Autumn/Winter 09, with very long shirts. I think I’m very keen on that element. But as you’ve described it’s not an ordinary ‘oversized’. It’s like white trash hip-hop style, it’s skinnier.

DMD: You’re based in Berlin. What do you think of fashion there at the moment? I think I probably have a really romanticised view of it. To me it’s punks and then purist/modernist stuff like Jil Sander...

CE: First of all it’s like what would you define as ‘German fashion’. To me, Germany always looks outside and doesn’t really push it’s own talents, we don’t have an identity like British designers do, though I do feel it is coming. Of course you had Jil Sander back then, a different time, but now I think the German designers I appreciate, their playground is not in Germany. They’re coming to London or Paris.

DMD: What’s the street fashion like at the moment?

CE: When I do eventually leave my studio I see some exciting things! I think the girls are really well dressed in Berlin, though the boys need a bit more of a push - English men are much more daring. There is a cool style that’s more sombre, if I could summarise it it’d be a mixture between Scandinavia, London and Paris. Very black.

DMD: Did you always want to be a designer, growing up?

CE: No. And I’m not one of these designers who say ‘I’ve been dreaming of this since I was four years old’! 

DMD: But I like that. I think the most interesting designers are the ones that come to fashion by chance, there’s a different perspective that makes their output richer. What were you like as a child?

CE: Boring! [Laughs]. I did a lot of arts and crafts; drawing. I started sewing when I was fourteen and I made terrible clothes for my boyfriend at the time to wear. I liked sewing but I always thought I was going to be a schoolteacher or something - it was at seventeen or eighteen I really thought ‘OK I can do something with this’.

DMD: Did you make clothes for yourself?

CE: I did. And you don’t wanna see them...

DMD: They were quite different to what you do now? Do you have any recurring influences? I know the end product is always one of integrity and a symptom of your language but I also know you have preoccupations before that...

CE: I think I’ve always been inspired by how the people in the American west would dress, though I’ve never been there. It’s a kind of ‘non-style’. I love Richard Avedon’s portraits of these really intense-looking but normal people. How they manage to wear a pair of jeans and a jumper and manage to look completely styled, you know? Like Tesco supermarket type-clothes but they look amazing. I think this is always the underlying idea, though there is then a technical part I introduce, trying to make something tricky look simple. I make it harder for myself, trying to make it appear ‘easy’.

DMD: That’s quite a cerebral thing, isn’t it? It’s something that you have to return to rather than getting it straight away, which is a lot more satisfying intellectually. Do you think you have a Carola Euler man? To me he’s boyish to contrast the tailoring...

CE: I think it sometimes changes depending on the season. This season I was more into casual, but there are seasons that become more about the tailored stuff. So it’s about how I feel. I usually go with what I feel at that moment, I never feel I have to fulfil a set of criteria.

DMD: What was behind Autumn/Winter 09? 

CE: The starting point was thinking more about a piece this season, as opposed to thinking about a show. There’s a lot of cotton and shape wise there are biker sleeves, a slight michelin-man look. We have long shirts, the jerseys with a pyjama tail and chino-type pleated trousers as well as what we call ‘space cowboy pants’ - trousers that look quite cowboyish in the back, as if a pair of trousers jumped on another pair. You’re going to laugh at the underlying theme though as it sounds a little crazy - I was thinking what would an astronaut wear on his day off in a spaceship. I mean what jumper would he wear to watch TV? Of course it’s a situation that doesn’t really exist. And god knows what the real ones do wear... I just love the idea of it.

DMD: That kind of comes back to the idea of your fascination with the American west - do you think you’d be disappointed if you actually went there and saw things yourself?

CE: Yes. It has to stay in the imagination, exactly. You know sometimes I’m afraid to do things because I have a romanticised view. Although I’d love to buy a car and do the whole road trip...

DMD: It could be the trip that changed everything for you.

CE: Actually that is a point. Quite often I like to take things that I completely hate and incorporate them somehow.

DMD: Your ‘Luxury’ collection too was all about what a lottery-winning teenager would consider beautiful clothes. That was exciting.

CE: Yes, a lot of what I do is hypothetical I suppose. The idea of something that could be but doesn’t necessarily have to be. I mean if a teen won a lot of money he would probably go to all the big brands but it’s fun to think if he would have an ideal pair of shorts to buy...

DMD: Do you think you have an interest in ideas that are bigger than clothes? When you did the installation accompanying that collection at b Store it was quite conceptual and all about branding -Carola Euler plastic disposable lighters, a Carola Euler skincare line that didn’t actually exist. Would you like to explore concept more?

CE: I would love to. It’s always a question of what you can do. I’d like to do it but I don’t claim to be a great thinker or anything, I just enjoy the irony of a lot of things.

DMD: It comes from a pure place with you, though...

CE: I try not to force myself to do things. People see it when you force things. If I would pretend to be a big party person I would be a complete poser, I wouldn’t even try! It’s important to stay true to yourself.

DMD: Can we talk about your relationship with London? You’re kind of between Berlin and London...

CE: London is so important to me, sometimes it’s hard to bring that idea across. I studied in London and was here for six years before moving to Stockholm to work. When I got the sponsorship for my MAN show I moved back for one and a half years before going to Berlin. Whenever I come here I feel at home, it’s always a part of me.

DMD: Do you think people miss the humour that’s in your work?

CE: Yes, it sometimes goes over people’s heads. At the beginning I was totally raging, pissed off when they wouldn’t get it! But the longer you do things the more you realise. You’re not in college anymore, you don’t get a pat on the shoulder for everything. Now I find it quite funny if people slate my work or say it’s ‘boring’ or whatever. It’s usually people in fashion or design that get it more because they have a different eye. I think I just have to accept that I’ll never be obvious or screaming, I do what interests me.

DMD: Would you ever do women’s? Or do you like to see women in your menswear?

CE: Maybe. Women do wear the label already, but I would always keep my menswear as menswear. I’m not into unisex.

DMD: I’m really into the idea of men’s clothes on women...

CE: There’s a singer in Berlin wearing it and I have a friend in Paris that works for Yves Saint Laurent wearing Carola Euler. It’s just really nice to see people going for it and enjoying the clothes.

DMD