For SS27, Johanna Parv approached things a little differently. Continuing her exploration of city living, materiality and functionality, the London-based designer staged an installation of “moving portraits” across three rooms, featuring films of four designers and artists whose practices reflect Parv’s own engagement with materials and process: Saša Štucin, one half of design duo Soft Baroque; chef Imogen Kwok; artist and ceramicist Phoebe Collings-James; and architect Nara Lee.

Directed by Alexandre Silberstein, the visuals blend city scenes with interviews, tracing the rhythm and rituals of each person’s daily life. They sit alongside Parv’s SS27 collection – displayed as “hanging sculptures” at the centre of the space – which embraces themes of engineering and adaptability, rendering familiar brand silhouettes in fabrics such as breathable linen, water-repellent natural wool and gabardine, and knitted nylon. Mesh cycling gloves, bandana caps and bags designed to fit neatly onto a bicycle frame extend the collection’s focus on utility and movement.

Below, we speak to Parv about the vision behind the season, and to the artistic talents featured in the installation.

Johanna Parv

Tell us the story behind this season’s offering, TEMPO?
“TEMPO began with the idea of time not only as something measured, but as something experienced through the body, movement and making. The Spring Summer 2027 collection responds to the changing conditions of a city summer: heat, wind, dust and sudden shifts in weather. The garments form an adaptable system of dressing, offering protection while remaining light and allowing the body to move. This thinking extends into the moving portraits, which explore how four women experience time through their own practices. Together, the collection and films consider rhythm, process, and the duration of material and form.”

What sparked the decision to present this collection as a film?
“I wanted to create a body of work that documents and gives space to a curated group of extraordinary women working across design, architecture and fine art. These are women who inspire the brand, it’s muses and it’s customers, and who are among the progressive and influential voices shaping culture and community today. I was particularly interested in the technicality of their practices: how they work with materials, develop processes and transform ideas into physical forms. I was also curious to investigate how these four women perceive time and consider the duration of material and form. Film allowed us to capture more than a finished portrait. It gave space to their voices, gestures and individual rhythms, as well as the technical processes behind their work. How do all the creatives featured represent your design practice?

Although they work across different disciplines, I recognised a shared focus on technicality, material and process. Each woman has a precise way of working and a close understanding of how an idea can be translated into a physical form. This is closely connected to my own design practice, which begins with the body and considers how materials, construction and function can respond to movement. I was interested in bringing together women whose work is both conceptual and highly technical.”

Phoebe Collings-James

How do you feel your practice relates to Johanna’s work?
“There is a shared focus on material details and what it is to move through our environments, especially being in the city and feeling fluid with it.”

How has London influenced your creative practice?
“I was born here, that experience has been an incessant reference for the miracles and the burdens of a metropolis. It’s something that I return to continually in my practice, especially working with an ancient technology like clay, which was literally born from Babylon.”

Imogen Kwok

How do you shape food as a medium for art and creativity?
“I work at the intersection of cuisine, craft and material thinking, I apply the same rigour to food that one would metal, glass or fabric – while embracing the fact that everything I make will eventually melt, bruise, oxidise or, of course, be eaten.

Food gets to enter your body. That intimacy is something you can’t replicate in any other medium. You don’t just look at it or listen to it, you ingest it — it becomes part of you, at least for a moment. It’s tied to nostalgia, to deeply personal memory, to a completely individual experience. Unlike other art forms, Eating and food is obviously ephemeral; it only lasts for a moment. I’m always thinking about how to work with this impermanence – because through cooking, it’s my way of carving out just a pause, a moment of stillness and find beauty in that moment right before the first bite, taste and touch.”

How have you seen the crossover between food and fashion evolve in recent years?
“Food and fashion share a vocabulary, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Drape, weight, sheen, structure, tension – we’re both describing how a material behaves and how a body meets it. Tactility sits at the centre of each. You learn what something can do by handling it, repeatedly, over years.

Both are crafts before they are anything else. There are techniques that have to be learned, rehearsed and mastered until the hands know them without being asked, and only then does instinct have anywhere to go. That’s what makes them intuitive disciplines rather than purely conceptual ones. So when the two come together properly, it isn’t a styling exercise. It’s two sets of people who notice the same things: how a surface catches light, where it gives, how it moves against skin. There’s a real appreciation for the detail of material language on both sides.”

Saša Štucin

A lot of your designs focus on combining conflicting functions; what is it about the beauty of contradiction that interests you?
“It can make something familiar feel slightly strange again. A lot of everyday objects are designed to be very clear about what they are and what they do. We’re interested in disrupting that clarity a little, to create a tension between different possible readings. It is a reflection of the way the world is anyway. We need to hold contradictions in our minds or else we go crazy.”

What era of design do you find most inspiring and why?
“We’re drawn to the late 19th and early 20th century, when industrialisation was changing the way objects were made and understood. There was a strange mix of craftsmanship, new technology and optimism about industry.

We’re also quite interested in the Baroque, more as a metaphor, but also as a style. Today, it’s less organised and more chaotic, but in spirit, we’re perhaps closer to the Baroque than ever before. We have devices and functional narratives that would put those old-world rituals to shame. The combination of decadence and necessity makes a strange reality, especially in our online lives. So probably whatever era we are in right now, allusive to categorise from within but fun nonetheless.”

Nara Lee

As an architect, what environment would you create for Johanna’s designs to exist in?
“I would imagine a space for cultural dialogue, rather than just a retail store. The space would seamlessly merge technology and art, bringing people together while expressing the refined functionality inherent in Johanna’s work. Retail spaces today have become rather predictable, especially in activewear, which often borrows heavily from the aesthetics of high-tech gyms and outdoor environments. I’m more drawn to an unexpected synthesis. Placing Johanna’s work in a more cultural context could be interesting, for example, in an environment inspired by urban facades or office typologies, reflecting how contemporary women actually move between active routines and professional life. In terms of materiality, I would be interested in translating the technical fabrics and precise construction of her work into new architectural details.”

How did growing up in Korea shape your practice?
“Korea’s constant transformation built my agility as a designer. The country has grown at an extraordinary pace and scale since my childhood. Moving alongside that energy made flexibility feel intuitive. I don’t follow a fixed design style. Instead, I remain open and consistent in how I engage with new concepts. There is also a quiet, stripped-back quality in Korean design that inspires me. It grew out of a long history of living with simplicity, where beauty came from a modest lifestyle. But inside that restraint, there’s always a subtle, playful wit. Living in Paris now, I notice how much this sets Korean minimalism apart from French decorative traditions. For me, this understated approach is a core part of how I work.”

Photography by Georgia Graham