Ligia Dias started out in ready-to-wear and worked for a time at Lanvin before detouring into jewelry and winning the Andam prize for Young French Design in 2009. No sooner did Rei Kawakubo get a load of her povera approach—i.e. mounting humble washers and grapplers on grosgrain to render them haute, and mixing bourgeois pearls with run-of-the-mill chains or hand-painted wood—than she ordered a pile of pieces exclusively for the Comme des Garçons boutique in Tokyo.
Speaking of Japan, Dias is headed to Kyoto with her trusty tools for a six-month artist’s residency. Not surprisingly, her next collection will marry her industrial signature with an artisanal Japanese aesthetic.
