At 25 Camilla was working in a ‘really good job’ as an Esthetician in Stockholm but, at the same time, was very unhappy. “I wasn’t being creative and I felt that every year that passed I was getting further and further away from what I wanted to do,” she explains. “Then one day I remembered a moment at seven years old when I was drawing, and I had suddenly turned to my Mum and said: ‘I want to make clothes’. I had forgotten about it for 18 years.”

It was both an exciting and a scary moment for Camilla. “I had always been interested in the world of colour and forms but I hadn’t found the right place for my creativity and didn’t know where to start. I was afraid to fail in something that was so important to me,

but one day I just said to myself: ‘that is enough, I have to do it now.’”

 

Camilla applied to do a one-year course in Pattern-making at Tillskärarakademin Stockholm and knew immediately that she had made the right decision. “Yes, I’m in the right place - I’m home!” she recalls saying to herself at the time.

When it came to taking the next step in her career, Camilla had no doubts that she wanted to go to the centre of fashion design in Milan. In fact, in ‘the search for excitement’ when she was a teenager, she had travelled with some friends to Italy and had ended up living in Milan and the surrounding area for several years. She returned home because ‘I missed my home, family and Sweden’ she explains, but this period away gave her both the knowledge of the language and of the City that she would find so useful years later. “It seemed like destiny that I was coming back to Milan,” she says.

Camilla explains that it is not difficult to get on the Fashion Design course, but it is difficult to stay on. “It is very competitive, fast and a lot of hard work,” she says. “I am studying seven days a week and many people leave because they can’t keep up with the pace. There are moments when I look around and see a thousand others doing the same thing and I wonder if there is a place for me. But three years have flashed by and I’m still here,” she says.

People move to study at the Istituto Marangoni from all over the world. They learn to draw, do pattern-making and sewing and gradually move on to creating their own collection. “What I love about the place is that you don’t need a lot of experience to come here, but if you have talent they give you the opportunity and you can stay on.”

 

Another aspect of the Istituto that Camilla likes is the fact that a lot of the teachers have their own businesses outside the school. “A graphic designer for example may teach computers and also run their own studio in Milan. You have so many opportunities to make contacts here because it is a smallish city, but so many people are involved in the fashion and design world. It means you have a much greater chance to meet people who have the same interests as you.”

Is it expensive? “Yes, that is the hard part,” says Camilla. “Accommodation costs a lot and we have to find and buy all our materials ourselves. Luckily I work for the Swedish brand Acne Clothes and I get to travel all over Italy to promote the work of the company. It is a good combination for me with my studies and it helps me in my creativity.”