Di Petsa Talks Desire, Dressing Up & Designing For Women’s Bodies Ahead Of Her LFW Show

 In a fashion landscape drowning in bland basics and copycat classics, unique voices ring louder than ever. Enter – the multi-hyphenate designer behind her label of five years, Di Petsa – who is part of a small but mighty cohort bringing a radically fresh eye to womenswear.  

Famed for her signature Wet Look style – a hand-sewing technique she developed over six months, which has been worn by the likes of Bella Hadid, FKA Twigs, Nicki Minaj, Lizzo and Kylie Jenner, to name a few – her rigorous esoteric exploration of modern femininity through clothes, bodily fluids, poetry, words, art and movement posit her as a singular, provocative talent. All reasons why she’s been shortlisted for the 2025 British Fashion Council/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund.

“I have women who are lawyers and they war my stuff,” says the 30-year-old designer, speaking over a video call from her base in Kingston-upon-Thames. “Then I have artists, musicians... The common thread between all of them is that they see dressing as something bigger, as a ritual.” 

It’s just days prior to her AW25 show at London Fashion Week, and yet she is calm and collected. “I love making beautiful clothes,” she says. “A big part of the business is to make clothes that people can wear every day. But there’s also the art, the show and concept, which is what drives everything. When I think of people who wear my clothes, I don’t think of them as just a client. They are taking part in a performance; in the project.”

Her shows certainly live up to that moniker. Her first-ever presentation was a bacchanalia of sorts; she created a pond in the catwalk, and her performers kissed and danced around to a breathy soundtrack and her own poetry narration. She’s since shown the true diversity of the human form in all its beautiful, honest and rich permutations, from depictions of menstruation to pregnancy – last season, her collection featured “masturbation denim”: low-rise jeans with front pocket poised for a hand to slip into. “These pieces are a bit more out there,” she says, “but they do well commercially. People want to be part of that narrative.”  

Dimitra’s own narrative began in the suburbs of Athens, near the Port, as the eldest of three. Her younger sister now works alongside her in the business, while her little brother is studying architecture in London. She regularly travels back and forth to Athens, where she has an atelier and produces part of the collection, which is also made in factories in Italy and the UK. Her break from the cerebral nature of her work comes from getting out into nature, skiing, climbing and dancing. “I love to go dancing,” she laughs, noting that while making her latest collection she planned her time so that “once a week, I could go out and dance”.

Her cue into design, however, came from her grandmother – a seamstress who taught her to sew. “I got a lot from her. It was very inspiring, this idea that you’re not just the seamstress to a client, you’re also the psychologist, the mother, the girlfriend. One moment you gossip, the next you cry. It was a time that was very intimate between the person who makes your clothes and you. That’s something I wanted to continue in the business.”

She came to London to study, doing her BA in performance art at Central Saint Martins prior to taking on the MA in womenswear. This combination of disciplines has informed all her work since. “It’s very much about using your body as a canvas,” she says of her clothes, which work to celebrate the body beneath, rather than attempt to impose a silhouette on top. “The dress has to [work] for the body, instead of the body manoeuvring to fit into the dress.

“When I created the Wet Look, I wanted it to feel and move like it’s wet. It was really important to make clothes you can move in, number one, and number two, that if you lose or gain weight, it will still fit. Usually more practical things – like this love for the wearer – is missing in a lot of ‘high fashion’.” Unsurprisingly, her consideration of form extends to all bodies, she is one of a fledgling group actively changing the narrative on catwalk casting.  

Dimitra’s Greek heritage also runs as a thread throughout her work, plying the arcs of ancient and modern. “Ancient Greek mythology has always been very influential to me,” she posits, citing “the intense dialog between past and present” in particular. Her new collection takes its cue from Eros, the god of love and sex, breaking down the archetypes of desire. “It started as research into female desire for a book I am writing,” she offers, explaining that the collection takes a view from “this idea of how we dress when we want to fall in love or how we dress to fall in love with ourselves. We have the knight in shining armour, the angel, the siren, the idea of the bride in the sense of self-pleasure.” Typically, her interpretation inverts traditional ideas, for example: “Bridal is an interesting time where a woman can be self-indulgent and narcissistic without being looked down upon. It is a time [when] women are allowed to occupy space”.

The Di Petsa bride, of course, is not in need of male approval. “I have clients who bought dresses to get married to themselves. I love this idea of self-love. You can save yourself, you can save each other, you can fight for love.”

Di Petsa’s 3 Designers To Watch

So which fashion creatives does the visionary force have her eye on? “The following women all have very distinct, original voices,” she says. “It’s really important in fashion to be able to create your own trends, and not follow trends. These three are all female designers, and they love women. London is the most diverse fashion week [in terms of sizing] and it’s because of us. But we have the least resources – it should [also] come from the bigger brands.”

1. Karoline Vitto – Nominated for the LVMH prize and championed by Dolce & Gabbana, the Brazilian designer’s size-inclusive work is a consistent paean to women in all their full-bodied glory.

2. Michaela Stark – Turning underwear and corsetry into the body politic, Michaela’s performance artistry asks us to radically consider how a woman’s body should, and can, be moulded.

3. Sinéad O’Dwyer – Nominated for this year’s LVMH prize, London-based Sinead’s work combines fetish with wardrobe classics in a genderless, size inclusive proposition.