FASHION AND STARS

February 3, 2024

The invisible becomes visible

FEBRUARY 2024 - TOUCH

In the world of Universo Maglia

Sofia Mattioli is half Italian and half South African, but born in France. It has the Sun in Taurus in the 9th house, it is ascended Virgo and it has the Moon in Aries in the 8th house. Creative and studious and very emotional and sensitive, it is something that has always made her strong, but also very fragile at the same time. If you had to define yourself professionally, you would never use names like “creative director, video artist, designer” because they bore her tremendously.

“I think it’s time to create a new way of affirming, regardless of what we do for a living. We need to change language, use descriptions that are truer and closer to our soul and our nature. The rest comes later.”

I think it's time to create a new way of affirming. I think it's time to create a new way of affirming.

In your work you have decided to combine astrology with fashion. That?

Astrology is something I started studying almost ten years ago. This has allowed me to interpret life in a deeper way, and closer and closer to the truth. I started linking astrology to creativity in a broad sense, already in 2015 with music and video art and then in fashion because I wanted my project to be also linked to something of my mother.

We went back to basics. Sofia’s mom had a knitwear brand that she followed from the 80s until the 2000s. It was time to give it a new life, with the right key. Sofia found it with astrology.

This is how Universo Maglia was born, a project that has existed for just over a year as a creative hub where astrology experiments in art, understood as a field that encompasses fashion and many other practices. It is not a brand, but a school of thought, where the planets communicate ideas, guides to create. The different collections are inspired by this concept and soon, Sofia would like to introduce other transversal disciplines. For example, the desire to one day make it a foundation, a point of reference for the dissemination of astrology in schools.

« I have just been to Africa and I did a small astrology program starting from the basics to the children in Malindi and it was wonderful and there I understood how this philosophy speaks to souls, children immediately understand if something is true and not because they do not live in judgment, but in instinct and curiosity»

This magazine tells the world of the senses, from taste to hearing. It’s a “sixth sense.” We have connected it to the world of fashion, which is aesthetics but also ethics, vision and matter. And so we wanted to investigate this relationship as well.

« The world of fashion interests me from the point of view of the creative process. Like everything else in art. The magic for me lies in the process, from research to design to production, in everything that happens behind the scenes. I study the invisible, and it’s what I’m most in contact with, what I feel most comfortable with. I believe that fashion is important from the point of view of symbolism linked to customs, eras, different cultures. It’s history. I would like the garments of the Universo Maglia collections to be read as a representation, a gesture of interconnection, of the study and of the message. I would like them to be seen as a hand that seeks to bring people closer to what exists inside and outside of them. They are talismans. »

Alfa1 is the first collection by Universo Maglia, dedicated to Aries, to the energy of Mars that has the element of fire and represents a force that, although traditionally entrusted to the masculine, also has within it the archetype of the warrior woman. It’s independence. He embodies the spirit of the pioneer, of the adventurer, of the athlete. The phrase that best represents this figure is “I am”, a drive that resides in autonomy and freedom.

In fact, the garments in this collection are seen as garments that can confer strength, protection and vitality. The colors and materials range from the color red, to the gray of knitting, such as the ancient armor of soldiers, as well as iron as metal. As in fairy tales, I want these garments to be something magical, so that when worn, you can perceive the energy of the archetype linked to the sign.

If you had to think of a warrior woman, Sofia would tell me that all the women she knows are warriors. “I’m lucky to have great examples around me. Being a warrior means fighting for what we believe is right, listening to that voice within us that keeps us going despite adversity. The aries archetype exists in all of us, at various times in life. Women have incredible resilience. Wonder is always with us, like magic. Wonder lies in the joy of small things, and in the presence or absence of it. Or in that invisible field that lies in the middle between everything that exists and does not, everything that is and is not at the same time. »

by Alessandra Busacca

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FASHION AND STARS