Designer and art director Carlo Galli brings a radical perspective on the relationship between body, form and sustainability. Specialising in lingerie, beachwear and sportswear, with over twenty years of research into ergonomics, responsible materials and the representation of the female body, Galli will lead a workshop that transforms tailoring into a somatic and participatory experience. As part of the programme of Dressing the Future 2025, Bodyscape invites the public to rediscover the body as a landscape and intimate apparel as identity architecture, through a practice that intertwines design, self-awareness and an ethical vision of contemporary fashion.
The body as landscape, intimate apparel as architecture of support and identity
An immersive workshop For those who wish to explore the relationship between body, identity and form through conscious sartorial design, transforming the creation of a bespoke bra into an experience of art, ergonomics and well-being. Guided by designer Carlo Galli, participants will experiment with a somatic and three-dimensional approach to modelling, starting with an analysis of the body and its strengths, tension and support. The use of deadstock fabrics and locally sourced materials allows for the creation of unique and responsible garments, reducing waste and promoting sustainability in the lingerie supply chain, which is traditionally difficult to recycle.
Bodyscape transforms tailoring into participatory eco-design: each garment becomes a personal expression, a tool for empowerment and a manifesto of ethical design.
An immersive experience combining technique, critical thinking and creativity, designed to stimulate the ability to design sustainable tailored garments, promoting low-impact materials and local supply chains, and encouraging a positive perception of the body and creative work.
The collective work will be exhibited in the artist's space, conveying a message of co-creation and regenerative design to the public.
Carlo Galli is an Italian designer and art director specialising in lingerie, beachwear and sportswear, with over 20 years of experience in sustainable fashion. Founder of INDIVIDUALS Lingerie-Bikini in Milan, he also led the creative direction of a special project for Arena Spa (2022–2024), overseeing concept, pattern making, fabric research and product development.
Her work combines ergonomics, aesthetics and sustainability, creating garments that respect both the body and the environment. She has taught at IED Milan and AFOL Moda, sharing her expertise in tailoring, pattern-making and textile research, promoting an ethical and responsible approach to design.
After years at Mantero Spa, where he collaborated with fashion houses such as Gianfranco Ferré and Diane von Furstenberg, Galli embarked on an independent journey that intertwines art, fashion and self-awareness, working on the female body in all its shapes and sizes. Today, her practice moves between sartorial study, personal research and political reflection on the representation of the body, bringing sustainability and empowerment to the forefront of contemporary design.
Where did Bodyscape originate? What was the initial thought or image that prompted you to conceive of the body as a landscape to be explored?
My encounter with dance prompted me to study the body through anatomical charts in order to identify muscles and proportions. I then added movement, considering the elastic forces involved in tendons as lines of force stretched across our bodies. I then studied how the body changes in movement and created shapes that encourage, support and promote these dynamics. However, I felt that we could go further and encounter a new concept of inclusive wearability, for normal bodies and for different bodies. Over time, I came to consider all physicalities, including those women who do not recognise themselves in classic sizes.
In your Bodyscape workshop, you invite participants to “read” the body rather than draw or dress it. What changes in design when the body becomes the subject rather than the object?
I believe that underwear has a direct relationship with our bodies, precisely because it is in contact with our skin: there is an individual component, a cultural attitude, and even a political significance given by female bodies that confront society. Underwear is part of a woman's image.
Each of us is a unique combination of matter and experience, and “reading the body” means introducing this variable into product design to create garments that interact and dialogue with this complexity. If we could sum it all up in a single sentence, I would say that “it is not the body that must fit the size, but the garment that responds to the body's manifestations”.
A tailor-made garment allows these nuances to be fully taken into account, but simply grouping women according to their proportions rather than their size, knowing that proportion is the relationship between several parameters, is a concrete step towards the liberation of bodies.
Lingerie is an industry that is often invisible but has a high environmental impact. Do you think that material awareness can also change body awareness?
I prefer a sociological approach to fashion, and therefore awareness of the product and awareness of oneself and one's relationship with society go hand in hand. But beyond the political and anti-consumerist value of this reasoning, I believe that our bodies are the result of their personal history and shine with their own light, and what a piece of underwear can do is spark awareness and illuminate the figure because feeling good in your underwear is the basis of self-esteem.
You are a designer, but also an artist and a researcher. How do technical precision and creative freedom interact in your work?
As we grow up, we arrive at a definition of the meaning of everything, as if we had to break things down in order to understand them. Creativity, on the other hand, arises from the correspondence of meanings, that particular condition typical of children in which an object can be a marker, a dummy or a nail. To develop the creative process, we need to know how to take our research beyond knowledge, into the realm of intuition, creating correlations that are not visible to the naked eye. To do this, we need to know how to look with different eyes, those of a child.
A plan for the future?
Creating garments that interact with the body through elastic tension that awakens the muscles and helps musculoskeletal balance. Garments that are born from movement and that benefit especially those who do not exercise. To do this, I decided to start experimenting first-hand through dance. A hybrid design that combines movement, somatics and sportswear.
We believe that artificial intelligence has infinite powers only because we have not yet awakened our own.
What skills do you think young designers should develop — or what “toolbox” should they build — to approach your area of expertise, as a representative of one of the possible sectors and fields of application of their future professions?
The lingerie and sportswear sector is undergoing rapid change, and to understand the direction it is taking, it is necessary to observe individuals and society: individual paths influence our cultural landscape and are in turn influenced by it. The forces at play are sometimes conflicting, and the result may not be intuitive. It is a matter of enriching one's vision with as many influences as possible and knowing how to bring everything back to one's own path of research. I believe that we should not start from the product but from the concept, and between “details” and “substance”, I always choose the latter.
