About

Milena is a designer who crafts insight-based creative strategies and projects for brands and organisations on a sustainable basis. 

Her first half is Brazilian; the second, Italian. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Fashion, from Feevale University, a specialisation degree in Strategic Design from Unisinos University, both in Brazil, and a master’s degree in Design from HDK at Gothenburg University in Sweden, where she’s currently based.

Milena has pinpointed several locations on her professional map, including cities in Brazil, Canada, the United States, and Europe. The line she draws to connect them is her genuine interest in understanding how people relate to the world and to things.

She started her career at the biggest retail group in Brazil, Lojas Renner, in the Research & Development department as garment creator and technician. Later, she moved to Rio de Janeiro to take an internship with a Brazilian leading designer, Isabela Capeto, as the outcome of a design competition.

After being at the finals of a trainee process of Arezzo&Co, the leading Brazilian shoe conglomerate, Milena got hired as the head designer of one of the group’s brands. From that on she worked between two other shoe factories, designing female fashionable leather footwear and being part of the decision-making board.

She then sought to collaborate for purposeful fashion. In partnership with a former university colleague, Milena created Closet Detox, a personal styling consultancy focused on sustainable consumption.

The business soon became popular in Porto Alegre, attracting several clients. Closet Detox also participated in relevant events, such as Fashion Revolution, lecturing in events, being invited to teach on the subject and being interviewed on TV.

Having moved to Gothenburg, a reference city in sustainability, she sought to explore this subject in depth. She took part in exhibitions, such as Rian Design Museum, Stockholm furniture & Light fair and the classic long-established Fuori Saloni di Design in Milan. Her projects aimed to trigger reflections and start conversations about the life span of objects that designers design.

Stylist, teacher, art director, print maker, fashion consultant, researcher, designer, artisan, artist, writer, and performer. Also, helicopter vision: identifies unlikely connections. She sees herself as a Swiss Army knife - someone who always carries a toolkit and stands out for her multifunctionality.

Living a large part of her life as a foreigner made her permeable. Her travels and the sense of otherness have enabled sensitive exchanges with people and environments. Milena prefers to work from the existing: boundaries are channels for creative expansion, not limitation.

In her master's thesis she explores the wicked problem of sustainability. Milena suggests that the future of objects is to last longer in their purposes than in their afterlife. In a world where things are programmed to be replaceable, or in which their durability is, paradoxically, overcome by new (in)dispensable versions, creativity becomes crucial to think about sustainable solutions. More than provoking reflection, Milena proposes to rethink consumption and resignify the ties between people and objects, being a great stylist of things.

Text written by Victoria Muccillo in 2020.

Since then, Milena is still based in Gothenburg and has been working on her own line of accessories in plexiglass. At the moment, dedicated to expand knowledge in 3d softwares, printing and crafting.