Angela, our Milan correspondant, said that Cristina’s love of the clean and linear comes from her experience of living in Berlin, which has been the capital of “rational aesthetics” since Walter Gropius of the Bauhaus. In fact, her love of shapes can be seen in her designs, where she creates conceptually conceived geometric pieces that allow a person’s personality to form the garment, rather than the garment forming them. For Cristina, it’s all about discovery, whether it’s finding fifteen different ways to drape a rectangle or digging through a pile of clothes at a psychiatric hospital, one of her favorite places to hunt (at one point in her video, Cristina points out how this institution uses the exercise of uncovering old clothes as a way of escaping their reality). I love how Cristina rolls up a pencil skirt and belts it, and the way she takes a man’s tie and throws it around her neck. In keeping with her Sardinian heritage, she loves black, but will venture out to white, navy, gray, and brown, always with the underlying minimal line. There are not many moments where I am tempted to leave my layers, Victorian bustles, and chunky rings behind, but after seeing Cristina, now is one of those times.

If you like Cristina, you might also enjoy Lauren Boyle, Fatima Al-Qadiri, or Crayon Lee.