Running on two hours of sleep, Paolo Carzana is lumbering through my questions, his voice heavy with exhaustion as we speak over the phone in the days leading up to his Autumn/Winter 2025 presentation. Fashion thrives in immediacy and rarely grants the luxury of time – it was only a month ago the young designer began cutting his initial fabrics. For a designer with as incisive an eye as Carzana, that can take its toll. “In an ideal world I’d have started earlier, but throughout the year I’m working to make money,” he says. “Now I’m in the period where I’m sleeping at the studio.”

He might not be the most famous name on the London Fashion Week calendar, and far from the wealthiest, but he’s among the most respected. Vogue’s Sarah Mower has been a supporter since Carzana was at Westminster University back in 2018, before he’d finished his studies with an MA at Central Saint Martins; following his show last season, The Cut’s Cathy Horyn wrote that “his work continues to absorb me for its absolute integrity, and because no designer sees beauty and strength the way he does.” There was barely a dry eye in sight at that intimate presentation in his leafy Hackney back garden, where a model stroked the water of a pond in a reenactment of Caravaggio’s Narcissus, soundtracked by the soulful voice of Anohni, before the rest of the looks in their raggedy organic shapes eeked their way out from his back porch. That was part two of his ‘Trilogy of Hope’. His latest, Dragons Unwinged at the Butchers Block, marks the final instalment. 

Working through the night at the Paul Smith Foundation’s studios in Smithfield Market, Carzana has watched as the butchers begin their morning rituals, carving through the quiet before the city wakes. By the weekend, Fabric nightclub is in full swing just around the corner. It’s a patch of London that never truly sleeps – a little like the designer himself. “As a vegan, being around the butchers, I have feelings that I would not expect. Even though it is hard to understand what is happening, you see a real community of working people and working tradition.” It got him thinking about dragons, about power, about what it means to be at the mercy of another. Dragons, to Carzana, are the ultimate symbols of beauty and strength, untouchable and free. But look at the world now: the destruction of the earth, the erosion of human rights across the globe. What happens when your wings are clipped – when your power is taken before you even get to stretch?  

This was the question that lay heavy on his mind while crafting the new collection, which culminated on a drizzly Sunday evening when Carzana brought the fashion crowd to the Holy Tavern – a tiny, romantic 18th-century boozer in Farringdon – where 60 guests nestled onto barstools in its cosy nooks or braved the drizzle outside. The collection was concise at just 15 looks, and as usual, each felt lushly historic. 19th-century-inspired pieces were bunched and clustered around the body, constructed from scraps of lace and linens and forced close to skin in stitchless tying, sometimes flowing down in a graceful swell as his models made their procession. Pictures don’t do his clothing justice, they make you want to grab them and shake out the dust – in person, there’s a gorgeous, hazy sheen to his sparing use of translucent fabrics and laces, their surfaces reflecting back the street and candlelights. These are all pieces and techniques Carzana has honed through his decade of design – but what’s new here is his palette. “All the colours have been applied by hand with brushes and spray,” he explains.

“The first of my Trilogy of Hope, Melanchronic Mountain, was loosely set in heaven, and was about the idea of climbing to the top. After that, we jumped off into the underworld with How To Attact Mosquitos. This, now, is where we take flight into the end. This is purgatory.” For Carzana, purgatory, where souls bathe in mercy on their passage of purification, was represented in washes of colour. “[The dying has] been an extended process. There’s a small, subtle element of pattern. I never really got around to it last time, but I was looking at Toulouse-Lautrec’s paintings and his beautiful earlier drawings. The colour application by hand has amounted in fairly softer shades. You might imagine the last [show] as soft, but this is soft in a very different way.” Those colours appeared in tones of pink against rich yellows and the occasional light blues made from the natural dyes of logwood, turmeric, madder and cochineal. They looked a bit like a sunrise, ready to spill into the light and take the day with them.

When asked if he considers himself spiritual, Carzana laughs. “That’s a big question, and I’m not ready to dive into it just yet.” Raised in Cardiff, where church and religious schooling were part of his upbringing, he has since drifted from organised faith but still finds comfort in the idea of something greater. That reverence seeps into his shows, too – it’s a quiet and thoughtful experience; there’s a palpable sense of transcendence, a collective quiet, and held breath. 

After Carzana’s tearful closing wave, he welcomed showgoers to linger a little longer, sharing wine and pints at the venue. He wanted to hear the audience’s verdict, from his supporters at Sarabande Foundation, ex-university tutors, his friends, and his mum. But at 8am, he has to be up again to set up for the BFC Newgen showcase. “I need to find some more funding,” he says, looking genuinely glum. “I don’t want to use the word fight, because it’s ridiculous to say this is a fight, but there’s so much value in this work, in the work of this industry that is viewed on that landscape of vanity. We want to give fashion that purpose and build that into the world. That’s what we need to do.” And Carzana’s all-encompassing, poetic vision of beauty is something that ultimately makes the world a better place, at least for a little while. Given where we are right now, you can’t put a price on that.