Carolina Sá Couto
Fashion Design BA Hons
Regent's University London
Graduates: 2026
Specialisms: Womenswear / Creative Direction / Genderless
My location: London, United Kingdom
Carolina Sá Couto
First Name: Carolina
Last Name: Sá Couto
University / College: Regent's University London
Course / Program: Fashion Design BA Hons
Graduates: 2026
Specialisms: Womenswear / Creative Direction / Genderless
My Location: London, United Kingdom
Website: Click To See Website
About
Carolina Sá Couto is a Portuguese fashion designer based in London whose practice is rooted in storytelling, specifically exploring the emotional and cultural narratives embedded within garments. Drawing from her background in textiles and her Portuguese heritage, she investigates themes of memory, identity, and belonging, often translating intangible feelings into tactile forms. Influenced by Portuguese artists such as Paula Rego and Joana Vasconcelos, Carolina’s work navigates the tension between fragility and strength, intimacy and structure. Her design approach combines material experimentation with a sensitivity to craft, focusing on texture, layering, and expressive silhouettes. She is particularly interested in the role of fashion as a medium for emotional communication and cultural preservation. Through her work, Carolina aims to create garments that resonate beyond aesthetics, positioning fashion as a space for reflection, connection, and narrative depth within contemporary design practice.
Saudade is a womenswear graduate collection rooted in Portuguese cultural memory and the quiet grief of longing. The word itself, untranslatable and deeply felt, guided every creative decision: the weight of fabric, the excess of volume, the tension between softness and structure. Inspired by fado, by Paula Rego, by my grandmother, and by the particular light of a country I carry with me in London, Saudade is built from contrasts. Balloon sleeves swallow the body. Tiered skirts accumulate like layers of memory. Velvet, hessian, and linen sit together without apology. Sustainability shaped the material choices throughout. Where possible, fabrics were sourced from Portuguese deadstock, reducing textile waste while staying rooted in the manufacturing heritage the collection draws from. Alongside this, traditional Portuguese textiles were woven into the work: burel, the dense ancestral wool of the Serra da Estrela mountains, and lenços de Viana, the richly embroidered cloth of the Minho region, both carrying centuries of craft and cultural memory. These are not decorative references but foundational ones, materials that hold the same emotional weight as the collection itself. Saudade was produced with the generous support of Ecolã, Burel Factory, and Triwool.
Competitions
