Casual sophistication & Northern nostalgia for women

High quality, sustainable materials and production. All made in Europe. Cecilia Sörensen studio is an independent design company founded in 2002. Cecilia Sörensen is a Finnish-born designer working and living in the Tramuntana mountains in Mallorca. The collection is locally produced in Mallorca, the aim is to use certified organic materials throughout the collection and for quality in all aspects of the production, fair to the environment and people.

Story

Any garment carrying Cecilia Sörensen’s signature is the natural product of an incessant creating process, which is both about an environment-friendly design and the conceptual interpretation of the privileged position clothes can reach to occupy within the chain of human evolution as containers of scents, feelings and shared wisdom. Through the crafty elaboration of subtle yet firmly structured patterns and the inventive use of recycled masculine shirts alongside with new high quality fabrics, Cecilia Sörensen women’s wear is ushered into a highly soft and organic world imbued with an aura of timelessness.

Evolution and reinvention of the classics rather than rupture. What if clothes were made to last forever from generation to generation? Cecilia Sörensen’s design leitmotif has little to do with the hasty pace of catwalks and the use-and-throw zeitgeist of fashion. For Sörensen, sewing and sculpting the draperies of her outfits onto the mannequins of her studio is nothing but just another mere facet of the ever-expanding embroidery of her life circles, which open up, grow and succumb to an end in the same way the tree leaves do in her garden with the advent of fall. Something similar to breathing more or less.

Flowers, Mediterranean light shed on the walls of her tiny studio, long Nordic summer-days and the warm presence of her beloved beings next to her may account for Sörensen’s main sources of inspiration; yet what the designer acknowledges as her most significant personal treasure is the collection of beautiful scrapbooks of family portraits she inherited from her Finnish grandmother.

Looking back to the genealogies of women and men whose blood we carry —white laces and long dresses, Sunday outfits and First Communion gowns. With their alluring charm and mystery, the individuals of these old photographs —the oldest of them dating back to the mid 19th century— possess, in their mannequin-like frontal postures, a diachronic quality which has aesthetically and conceptually determined Sörensen’s approach to fashion as an organic part of the DNA chain that connects us all with the past, the present and the future.

And the tree grows. And the chain grows. And the needle goes on giving birth, with an innate sophistication and elaborate details, to a romantic yet not any less pragmatic and easy-to-wear female line.

Subtle transparencies and colours fused by light, tender memories… Far from the extremes of buying into Victorian melancholy and retro romance, Cecilia Sörensen proposes a lyrical and introspective comeback to a fashion closer to the spirit, not to mention this planet. More dreamful and real than ever, Sörensen’s approach to the adult version of playing dress-up does not just involve dressing-up the body, but rather appealing to the inner self each one of us has become assigned to carry from generation to generation.

Bio

Cecilia Sörensen is a Finnish-born fashion designer who established her company in Barcelona in 2002. Currently living and working in the Balearic Islands, Spain. Sörensen studied tailoring and dressmaking in her native Helsinki. She then moved to the UK to pursue further studies in Fashion Design at the Southampton Institute but finally obtained her BA with Honours from EATM, Barcelona/Southampton University. The Mediterranean light had won her over once and forever.

After her graduation in 2001, Sörensen worked for designer Antonio Miró, continuing then to set out on her own, launching her own brand: the women’s wear collection “Cecilia Sörensen” and “Pequeños Héroes”, a line made of recycled materials. Her recognition as one of the most promising revelations in the Barcelona fashion-design scene was immediate; just one year after her graduation, in 2002, Cecilia Sörensen was awarded with the ‘Young Designer of the Year’, ModaFAD Prize.

Cecilia Sörensen has presented her collection several times at Fashion Weeks in Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin, London, Stockholm, Tokyo and Paris. Since 2006, her collection has been exhibited in Paris twice a year. 2008 brought more international acknowledgement: “Inside Out”, a video based on her S/S 09 collection, was premiered at the London Fashion Week and on the online fashion platform SHOWstudio, while at the end of the year 2008, Sörensen won the ‘Barcelona Es Moda’ Prize.

Besides running her own company designing the women’s wear collection and kid's wear collection, Mis Crios, Cecilia Sörensen has been a founding member of the collective designer’s shops Comitè, Bingo Shop and the concept store Still Light in Barcelona.

Natasha Christia

PRIZES

Barcelona Es Moda award Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona

Designer of the Year by Amnesty International Finland

ModaFAD Designer of the Year FAD Foment de les Arts i del Disseny Barcelona

MerkaFAD, FAD Prize for best a/w collection

MerkaFAD, FAD Prize for best s/s collection

CLIENTS & PROJECTS

Camper Kids, Balearic Islands

Snoopy, United Media USA

Nightology by J&B, Costume design, Barcelona

Salón Náutico de Barcelona / FAD, winner of the design contest for the wardrobe