The Curious Case of Paula Einfalt

It is a miracle that Paula Einfalt designs clothes at all. Not for a lack of a fashion instinct, but because the industry has already taken so much from her. In the 1990s, Einfalt’s parents founded the Croatian, then Yugoslavian, brand Skandal. It grew from near-nothing, into what Einfalt describes as an “empire” of 32 shops. Einfalt’s mother designed, her father managed the business, and together “they made millions” – until the 2007 economic crisis, that was. “They went bankrupt. We lost everything,” says Einfalt. “Then my dad got sick because of the stress and he died. I inherited a big part of his debt from the business.” 

It would be reasonable, after that, to go into almost anything else. Instead, Einfalt followed them into the same perilous world. “Considering I’m still trying to fix the problems they made in the past from the fashion business, you would think that I would never want to touch fashion,” she says. “But here I am, taking the same path they took.” She pauses. “I don’t think a lot of people know what it means to have a brand under your name, your credit – you can lose everything. You can even curse your kids, in a way.”

Einfalt grew up watching shop openings and renovations with her toys in hand. Her mother did not teach her to pattern cut but how to look good when everything was going wrong. “She knew how to be a diva,” Einfalt says admiringly. For much of her childhood, clothes belonged to dolls. Einfalt played with Bratz and Monster High dolls all the way up until she was 18. “They were my best friends.” Dolls offered her access to a population that she could design for and dress from a young age. Over the years, the transition from making clothes for dolls to making clothes for human bodies happened almost by itself. She applied to Central Saint Martins – accidentally to knitwear – and got in, then decided she did not want to knit. Einfalt instead studied bags and accessories at London College of Fashion, later returning to CSM.

Her father passed away the year she got into CSM. Her family could not pay for his funeral. She planned to move back to Croatia, ending the tenancy on her flat in preparation – then she received a Sarabande scholarship. A series of events followed in close succession, prompting her to stay: support from the British Fashion Council, student finance and “a lot of weird things”, including selling hats and clothes on Instagram. The MA brought its own gothic sidebar involving a Croatian gangster, a hoarder’s house in Croydon and plans to live there rent-free, so long as she helped renovate it in search for some speculative hidden money. Which she did, improbably, find. “It was never calm for me,” she says. “There was always something.” 

Now based in Paris, having spent a year working at McQueen, Einfalt has made her first collection outside of the scaffolding of CSM, photographed for AnOther by Alessandro Raimondo and styled by Rebecca Perlmutar. “Designing is the sweetest and the shortest part of it,” she says. “Everything else … is a different story.” The collection took six months to make, with help from an 85-year-old seamstress in Croatia. 

It’s a wardrobe of collisions: lace meets Lycra, feathers and activewear, romance and menace. A silver-grey mini skirt folded into extravagant rosettes, sheer black dresses with beaded floral embroidery over flashes of acid green, long lace sleeves, cutaway bodies, purple feathers sprouting from the shoulders and hips of a brocade dress, a vast magenta ruffle shrugged around the body like a sea creature. In one look, a sporty hooded jacket is worn over a pale blue feathered skirt; in another, orange trousers are interrupted by a huge black oval, as if a hole has opened in the garment and refused to close.

Einfalt is drawn to the 1920s and 1950s, to lace, old glamour and romantic clothing, but she does not want to make traditional lace dresses. “I want to bring it more into activewear,” she says. “Something really comfortable but still elegant and beautiful and empowering for women.” She likes contradictions: “weird shapes and colours that don’t necessarily go together, but also go together.” Having grown up with dyslexia, and having been placed in a specialist school, she spent much of her life feeling unable to explain herself verbally. Making things was her outlet. “That’s why I think I’m good at fashion,” she says, “because that’s the only way I feel like I’m fluent at something. It’s like a fluent language for me.”

The new collection is also, crucially, an attempt to find a system. Einfalt cannot bankroll a fantasy and wait for the world to arrive. She estimates the whole collection cost about €2,000, made largely from deadstock fabrics found outside Paris. The brand will be modelled on direct to consumer sales, each piece made to order, for an audience cultivated via Instagram rather than bygone showroom rituals. “It’s not baby steps,” she says. “It’s fetus steps. It’s so little steps, but once you build a foundation, it’s stronger.” 

Hair: Kiyoko Odo at Bryant Artist using Syoss. Make-up: Abbie Nourse. Casting: Holly Cullen at MA+ Group. Model: Eve Taylor at Next Management. Styling assistant: Precious Greham. Hair assistant: Ayumi Ohama. Make-up assistant: Yukako Matsuda. Producer: Bryanna Kelly