In The Studio: Layer-0

Clearly, Alessio Zero is a systems-thinker. At Layer-0, creativity is not separate from engineering: they are the thread under tension from which every garment is conceived and sewn.

Craftmanship here is not a buzzword: it is a founding principle. 

There is not much automated in the workshop, except a cutting machine. “It is precise”, says Alessio, “the laser accounts for every millimeter in a way that would be very difficult for a human to replicate, especially across hundreds of cuts.”

But cutting is only the start. Afterwards, every single piece of leather is manually worked down to a thinner edge before sewing. Nobody will see this. Nobody will feel it, and that’s the point.

One of Alessio’s striking and unusual skills is his ability to build his own designs from the sketching stage through to the finishing stage, including sewing and patterning… not only of garments, but also footwear.

“A shoe is a nightmare to make perfect”, says Alessio. He goes past his own energy, past the point a reasonable person would stop… and on the other side of that, he says, you feel invincible.

Sometimes, when the pressure builds, he listens to reggae. Peter Tosh. Music for people who have learned to take the world in stride, to not let themselves break, to keep feeling good.

He compares himself to a boxer.  “I’ll never give up the fight”, he says. He speaks passionately of that deep internal drive that pushes his creativity and his energy to the limit, day after day. 

And it makes sense that this is his fight. He sees his talent for fashion as a gift from the universe, and with this gift comes the necessity to create. This is simply something he must do. 

"We are the poetry," he says. Not the profit. Not the bottom line. The poetry.

Photography and text by: Estefania C. Campillo S.