Lorena Pipenco has always been bold and imaginative, more at home with bright colors and maximalist patterns than basic black and white. The 24-year-old graduate of the Parsons School of Design creates collections that pop with layered texture, theatrical structure, and absurdist proportions—and there’s always a strong storyline, too. Unsurprisingly, musicians love her work: She dressed Karol G for her tour and has outfitted Doja Cat’s dancers.
Pipenco’s debut collection was inspired by the 1972 Romanian musical Veronica, a movie she loved as a kid. What she thought was whimsical, Pipenco now recognizes as propaganda. For fall 2025, she reimagined the tale of Dracula, fantasizing about what the women in the vampire’s life might have been like and what they would have worn. There’s real tension between appreciating a classic and critiquing it through a modern lens, and this space is where Pipenco thrives.
Likewise, the designer sees fashion as a means to explore the cultural tug-of-war she felt growing up in the U.K. with Romanian roots. When she was younger, she remembers “feeling quite ashamed of my heritage,” she says. There’s that theme of tension again, that pull between feeling ostracized by peers and the desire to be proud of where she came from. As she’s started collaborating with her mother and grandmother (a lifelong seamstress), Pipenco has grown to embrace her background and now even sources textiles from her motherland. “I want to be a Romanian brand. I want there to be space to push my culture, and for people to feel connected to two different heritages. I think it’s important to have these stories within fashion.” Whether she’s making pop culture commentary or expressing a personal reckoning, Pipenco offers a universal mantra: Two things can be true at once.
As for her next big inspiration, she’s still trying to work that out. It might be “grannycore,” but then again, it could be linen. Either way, it’s sure to be entirely her own. “When it comes to the collections, I really try to block out the noise of what other people are doing. It just gets in your head. If I’m not working on my collection, I’m doing things that are completely unrelated, like watching reality TV or just really silly things.” Because I know you’re curious—“silly things” include karaoke three times per week. (ABBA, often, but she’s looking to refresh her repertoire.) No matter what this emerging star dreams up next, you can be Lorena Pipenco will stay true to herself.
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