Cormio: what actually make an independent brand appealing for Gen Z

Reported among Vogue’s best of 2024, Jezabelle Cormio, young designer and brand founder, seems to guess the main requests made by Gen Z: a target that the fashion system cannot ignore anymore. Her crafts, that combines the tyrolean aesthetics and the punk style, are characterized by a green impact and a specific social meaning. 

Jezabelle Cormio’s poetry: a princess dress and a soccer ball

According to her philosophy, a dress is first of all a way of self-representation: Jezabelle Cormio’s collections reflect the need to have fun decomposing and recomposing our self-perspective countless times. Since in our time fluidity matters, this appears as a relevant detail.

A distinctive feature of Cormio’s design is the cultural appropriation of elements conventionally belonging to a male identity: the objective is to develop a cross-contamination able to break down gender differences. It consists in a true rebellion against male and female codes, that allows anyone to manifest their identity freely.

The irreverent desire is to look ahead embodying contemporary values from a variety of perspectives, relying on Italian craftsmanship and heritage and mixing fantasy with reality.

Brand’s history and glocal ethics

Cormio’s history is based on two fundamental steps: a collaboration with Gucci Vault and the Camera Moda Fashion Trust Grant 2022. The first one is an online concept store commissioned by Gucci’s previous creative director, Alessandro Michele, to showcase cultural crossovers through suggestions made by upcoming talents. Meanwhile, the second one is an initiative promoted by the philanthropic fashion community Camera Moda Fashion Trust in order to grant financial assistance and business mentoring to Italian independent brands standing out for creativity, strategy and sustainable practices.

These are implicit recognitions of Cormio’s vision value and of her commitment to reduce the social and environmental footprint of the fashion system. Interesting from this point of view is the upcycling trend, which consists in reusing objects or clothes to give rise to a better-quality product, whether it is real or perceived. Jezabelle Cormio is surely keen on this practice, and her commitment to the eradication of hyper-fast production dynamics is evident. As a designer, she’s trying to create items of clothing with a strong reason to exist. In fact, each collection is mainly handcrafted in partnership with Italian manufacturing companies, with a focus on the supply chain traceability.

This is the best way to acquire a glocal dimension: global for her willing to address a diverse audience, local for the inspiration taken from the Italian heritage, the use of Italian raw materials and the rootedness in the tyrolean imaginary.

Why you scared?

Cormio’s collections are able to redefine the concept of femininity going out of the rules. The woman-and-fear duo was nearly obsessive in the last fashion show, with a storytelling divided between the feeling of fear felt by woman and the one aroused by them when they reach apical positions in society. 

The creative concept has been generated from a personal reflection born from the observation of contemporary realty: beginning with the protests of Iranian women and with the brutality described by Italian medias, adding the denial of the right to abortion in the U.S. and coming to personal conversations with friends, Jezabelle Cormio has understood the lack of an art able to claim woman’s role in our communities. As a result, she has developed a storytelling with a desecrating aesthetic made by words, music and references to the 2000s to give voice to this position.