About

The name is a
line of women
who made things.

My mother is Scilla, and Scillasdotter is her name, given to her daughters. So the name on the door is not a label I chose. It is where I come from. My sister Zamina Scillasdotter carries it too, from her atelier in Stockholm.

Design and tailoring are two different journeys and I went on both. One taught me how to see a garment before it exists. The other taught me how to build it so it holds. In 2009 I opened my own atelier and spent seven years doing every part of it myself.

Then I went to learn the other half. Ten years of buying, planning, margins, teams and process, next to the people who build collections for a living. I know how a collection is costed, how retail actually operates, and how a season gets made.

And I spent years on the road. Wardrobe tailor on tour with Lady Gaga, Pink, Rihanna and Cirque du Soleil, and designer and stylist at Eurovision for three years. A stage teaches you things a fitting room cannot. Nothing gets a second take.

Those are production credits, so I can name them. What I make for a private client stays between us, and it always will.

Artist collections built from nothing. Couture. Tailored suits. Wedding dresses. Styling and dressing for press, campaign and red carpet. The work changes shape every time. The method does not.

Everything is made in house, from the first sketch to the last stitch, so nothing leaves here that I have not seen at every stage. Sheer cloth against a structured line, a delicate detail inside a bold shape. I pick fabric for how long it will last, not for how it photographs this season. A piece should still be worth wearing in ten years.

Outside the atelier I compete in bikini fitness. It is the same discipline as this work. You measure, you adjust, you do it again, and you find out what you are actually capable of. I have never been interested in the average version of anything.

I am in Amsterdam, and I am taking commissions again.

Alexandra Scillasdotter