SUSANA BETTENCOURT

Susana is from the Azores Islands in Portugal and after finishing her BA degree in Fashion Knitwear she felt that the natural next step would be to continue to specialize in knitwear through the MA Honours Digital Fashion program which she concluded with Distinction. Having instantly gained high praise and recognition, for her sculptural knitwear and luxury high-technology fabrics, Susana continues to explore the boundaries between technology and hand-crafting knitwear techniques, developing the jacquard to the extreme in order to make textures and volumes in detail.

The AW15|16 collection - RECLAIM – inspired by the photographer Kai Fagerstrom’s work, is a representation of how some things that used to belong to people are slowly being reclaimed by nature again, it is a reinterpretation of the classics by Susana Bettencourt. How can “stripes” and “camouflage” still have the “Susana Bettencourt” ID? This is the challenge and the goal. Having the Nature versus Architecture as the starting point of the contrasts, Susana utilizes it’s technologic geometric rules directly into her so characteristic textured prints and jacquards.