Katja Luostarinen

She was raised between her native Finland and Belgium, where her family moved when she was 4 years old. They travelled a lot throughout her childhood, which gave her a curiosity for new cultures from an early age. She believes this open-mindedness and curiosity can still be seen in her work. She gets very inspired by foreign cultures, their traditional attires and patterns, and finding ways to transform those into modern fashion. Being always interested in art and in culture in general, she started thinking of fashion as a career possibility in high school. She enrolled on a short course in Istituto Marangoni Milano, and a year after the three-year course in Fashion Design at Istituto Marangoni Paris. She knew before starting her studies that menswear design was her true passion, and she chose to specialize in it. During and after her studies, she interned at several places, which were great experiences in learning how different types of companies work and structure themselves. In September 2012 she became a junior menswear designer at Givenchy.

‘My experience in Istituto Marangoni was of three great years of fulfilling my curiosity, pushing to find something new, exciting and creative, and discovering the true professional requirements of fashion design. It also gave me great friendships and contacts and an invaluable skill-set as a designer’.