clarissa labinClarissa Labin is a german designer. She studied women’s wear design at London College of Fashion.

Clarissa worked for 2 years as accessories designer for Christian Dior. Later on she worked 6 years for H&M, where she designed women’s wear and was specialized in knitwear and jersey. (Labin is quite familiar with both luxury and fast fashion markets.)

After 12 years abroad she returned to Berlin and designed her first collection for Fall/ Winter 2009.

Clarissa Labin wants to design clothes for women who want to make a colorful fashion statement.She plays with textures and surfaces to create a unique look, at the same time, the outfits look modern and chic.The stylish prints and nice color combinations enhance the bold but still feminine style.

F/W 2009

Labin’s work combined fantastic fine gauge techniques with bold patterns. (made on digital knitting machines or by printing jersey)She plays with interesting placement within a garment. For example, she is good at adding detail or texture to emphasize certain areas of the body.

She finds inspiration in nature, interesting surfaces, graphics and playful colors.

Her work combined fantastic fine gauge techniques with bold intarsia patterns.Intarsia is a knitting technique used to create patterns with multiple colors.There is only one “active” color on any given stitch, and yarn is not carried across the back of the work; when a color changes on a given row, the old yarn is left hanging.The motifs in this technique are made by knitting charts which look liked pixellated cartoon drawings.

Intarsia knitting (stranded knitting)

Making Intarsia pattern: http://www.knitsimplemag.com/node/74