Vintage Curated Brand ANEMONIA

Between intuition and curation is the vintage brand Anemonia

Anemonia was born from a friendship, a shared sensitivity, and the feeling that something was missing. Friends since the first day of high school, Eleonora and Linda spent years dreaming and creating together while following very different academic paths. But the deeper they went, the more they felt the need for a space dedicated to creativity, emotion, and self-expression.

What began as a shared habit of searching for hidden gems in Italian markets slowly evolved into something bigger. By selecting pieces that spoke to them, photographing them in their own intimate visual language, and building a small imaginary world around them, they created Anemonia: a curated fashion project and vintage brand rooted in the research of hidden, marginal beauty and in the desire to build a space of happiness to share with others. 

Soon, that world expanded beyond Depop listings and personal experimentation. Leaving Italy with a car full of clothes and photography equipment, they moved through Paris and Berlin to dedicate themselves fully to the project. Anemonia sources vintage, upcycled, and artisanal pieces for their unique character and emotional resonance, then curates, photographs, and reintroduces them through the brand. As outsiders to the fashion world, they learned to trust instinct over rules, shaping Anemonia into a universe where objects carry emotion, individuality is embraced, and beauty becomes a way of connecting with people and the world around us.

IRK: How do you define Anemonia today? Vintage brand, archive, or something in between?

Anemonia: Anemonia is our safe place: built slowly, with time and emotion, as a space where we can experiment freely and share beauty with people from all over the world. We never really thought about it through a specific label. Brand, archive, universe… we like keeping it unlabelled. We want it to grow spontaneously and intuitively, always leaving room for freedom and unexpected things. The moment you define something too precisely, you risk closing doors, and we’d rather keep them open!

IRK: What makes a piece stand out to you when you’re sourcing? Is it emotional, visual, or intuitive?

Anemonia: Our sourcing process is a mix of emotional dialogue and deep research. Sourcing garments, objects, places, and letting ourselves be surprised by what we encounter has always been our way of building an emotional conversation with what surrounds us. We look for “soulful” garments, able to tell their story through details and hidden beauty that only reveal themselves to those who really look with attention.

IRK: How do you build coherence within your selection while working with such unique, one-off items?

Anemonia: Coherence comes from having a very personal taste and sticking to it. That’s the common thread that ties everything together. At the same time, our taste is genuinely hybrid: we take what we love from very different places and let coherence build itself afterwards. It’s less about having a rigid framework and more about trusting what resonates.

IRK: How important is nostalgia in shaping Anemonia’s identity?

Anemonia: We were both born in 1997, so we spent the first part of our lives without social media, before technology and consumerism got as intense as they are now. We are nostalgic about a less fast-paced era, one where there was more room to dream, more time to build real connections, more empty spaces where things can truly resonate. But we actively work on recreating these “empty spaces” in our personal lives, and with Anemonia too.

IRK: How does your sourcing process work in practice, and what criteria guide your selection?

Anemonia: We work across different sources, and the selection process has very precise rules. We’re extremely picky about materials. We focus on fine wools, silks, natural materials, soft leathers: textures that feel like a second skin and can last for many years. Pieces also need to be comfortable and versatile, the kind you reach for again and again. But even the simplest item needs to have something special: a texture, a tone, a detail that tells a story.

IRK: How do you approach art direction and image-making to shape the universe of Anemonia?

Anemonia: The images we produce are the result of our personal ongoing experimentation, more than any fixed method. We almost never work with a moodboard. Instead, we talk about things we love, ideas we’re turning over, curious things we found, feelings we can’t quite explain yet. Then we let the situation itself inspire us. We’ve learned to trust the energy that happens during a shoot. That’s where the best things usually come from.

IRK: Anemonia seems to reject fast fashion logic entirely. How do you approach time, both in terms of production and the lifespan of a garment?

Anemonia: We both came to sustainable fashion through a personal understanding of how life can gain depth and value by incorporating fewer, carefully chosen, more meaningful things. Things that carry emotion and make you feel represented when you wear them. In fashion, this has always felt urgent to us, especially given the dangerous overproduction and overconsumption of recent years.

We take the ethical question very seriously, it’s where Anemonia is rooted. Whenever we’ve produced something beyond vintage, it’s always been from existing materials or through a very artisanal, sustainable process. We want to be conscious of every step. We want a piece to last forever.

IRK: Do you think of garments as objects with memory?

Anemonia: We’d say more with a personality than a memory, though maybe the two aren’t so different!

IRK: You work with both vintage pieces and independent creators. How do you balance curation and creation within the brand?

Anemonia: We’ve come to think of curation as a fully creative act. We build a place, abstract at first, but with very specific features, and then we look for things that belong there. That could be a vintage piece from a market, or a person whose own research overlaps with ours.

IRK: Do you have a favorite piece you’ve ever found for Anemonia?

Anemonia: Maybe our yellow deer bag, it’s just so cute!!!

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Photography: © Anemonia Team