Isa Boulder caught my eye when I saw Normani wearing the label’s negative space argyle knit separates—bra top, sleeves, bikini bottom, and socks—in her “Wild One” music video with Cardi B. The look is sexy yet crafty; experimental and alluring in equal measure. Normani’s not the only one who’s taken a shine to Isa Boulder, though. The swim and knitwear brand has won over the pop stars Dua Lipa and Lorde (per my Instagram feed) and most of Gen Z (per my TikTok feed). What makes it special is the way it seamlessly exists in an intersection between lingerie and ready-to-wear.
Designer Cecilia “Lia” Basari and her business partner Yuli Suri launched the brand as a swimwear line not long after Basari graduated from Central Saint Martins and returned to her native Indonesia in 2016. “We started with swimwear since it’s based on cut and sew and you don’t need to invest in new machines,” Basari says. “And, we wanted to create something that would also sell in Bali, and that’s swim.”
But we’re not talking basic bikinis. “I used to be so prejudiced against swimwear because I used to think it’s so simple to design, I thought it was just triangles,” Basari says, laughing. “But once I delved in, I realized, oh, you know, let’s push it.” In came the wire outlined and draped bra cups, ruched one-piece swimsuits, and hand woven bikini bottoms and tops, all made to sit somewhere between fashionable ready-to-wear piece and a true swim piece that isn’t “too heavy or impractical to be worn to the beach or by the pool.”
With a local factory shutting in Bali, the duo took over and hired its out-of-work artisans. Basari, who is committed to responsible design, had wanted to get into knit from the very beginning because you can reuse the materials. “You can rewind the yarns and reuse them more effectively and reduce some waste,” she says, making sure to add, “I don’t want to be a hypocrite and say there is no waste, but overall I think knitwear is much more efficient.”
Throughout our conversation, Basari often brings up the technical aspects of her work. That’s because, like many knitwear designers, she’s remarkably technically driven. “I like to know every little detail a certain machine can do,” she says. “What is the limitation of that particular gauge? What can certain yarns do? I’m like a kid in the candy store, I have so many things that I want to explore.”
Though the silhouettes tend to err on the simple side, Isa Boulder pieces are in fact extremely intricate. Together with her factory technicians, Basari is exploring the limits of knitwear. The best example of that boundary pushing is her negative space argyle technique. It started as an exploration of simple shapes to repeat on a pattern, but once placed on the body and stretched, the argyles form. It’s become a signature element, appearing not just in that Normani video, but in the brand’s upcoming collection as slip dresses layered over knitted turtlenecks.
For summer 2022 Basari is also expanding on the label’s “balloon” technique, which consists of stuffed tubes of swim fabric woven together to form braided, cable-knit-like dresses or basket-woven frocks. Similarly sexy and eccentric are her sculptural ribbed bodycon dresses, basketweave slips, and crochet frocks and tops whose gauge width varies depending on the part of the body they’re covering.
Many of the pieces for spring exist in a hybrid territory between swim and knit. Basari believes that it’s the balance of the two that has attracted pop-star customers including Dua, Lorde, and Caroline Polacheck. “They love the sexy nature of our brand,” Basari says. “They’re performers–they get to be more playful and sexy than regular people, so they were the first ones to embrace us.”
It’s Basari’s capacity for distilling a sensual allure out of the craftiness of knitwear that has placed it in a lane of its own. As I was wrapping up this piece, my TikTok algorithm cued up a get ready with me video of a woman trying on “this weird top she had gotten off SSENSE.” “I don’t think I can make it work guys,” she said, before putting together an outfit that seemed destined to conquer her own doubts and those of her followers. That, folks, is the Isa Boulder appeal.
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Originally posted from “VOGUE” by Jose Criales-Unzueta
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