Two weeks before her first catwalk show, Elisa Trombatore sits in her London studio surrounded by hand-sewn corsets and sheer runway looks. In just four years since graduating from Central Saint Martins, the Sicilian designer has built her fashion brand Dreaming Eli into one of London’s most provocative labels, challenging every preconceived notion about what femininity can be.
“For me, fashion isn’t about making clothes,” she says. “The idea of just making clothes for someone else sounded pointless. It was always about having a voice, and having a social message spread through garments.”
That message has resonated far beyond London’s fashion circles. Doja Cat has pulled her pieces. Zara Larsson has worn her costumes on tour for two seasons running. Tate McRae recently appeared in a full Dreaming Eli look in a music video. But for Elisa, these celebrity moments are secondary to creating a space where women can “be it all.”
“Growing up in Sicily I was surrounded by extremely powerful women,” she says. “Sadly they were all a bit too submitted to social constructs around who and what they were supposed to be. This annoyed me so much growing up there. I always felt the need to create a space where women can feel it all and where sensitivity and emotions can be a means of power.”
“Dancing on My Skin” explores the sensation of skin and body through fabric. The trousers, crafted from silk, were treated with a wax technique that creates a skinlike texture. The process not only alters the surface but also transforms the silk into something unusually structured yet malleable.
When she turned 18, Elisa left for Milan to study fashion, describing herself as a “massive first of the class want-to-be.” The structured, exam-based approach suited her perfectly, but enrolling in Central Saint Martins postgrad would change everything. Moving to London meant stepping into an entirely different world. “I don’t even know what grades I got, but I built a very full life while in London,” she says.
Her first postgrad project required living and designing clothing as an alter ego for four weeks. “I was this very simple Sicilian girl with dark hair who was shy—so I decided to become Barbie for four weeks,” she says. “I bleached my hair and completely changed my philosophy on life. It made me realize I can literally be whoever I want.”
This realization became central to Dreaming Eli’s ethos.
After graduating in 2021 Elisa faced the decision to either start working immediately or gain experience first. The decision was made for her when she secured a spot on London Fashion Week’s digital schedule just four months after graduation. “I started working on a collection straight away. It’s been this crazy roller coaster ever since. That’s why they always say, ‘once you’re in, you can’t really get out.’”
Another turning point came with her S/S 2024 collection, marking the first moment when people truly began to respond to her work. “The show went viral and a lot of people started sharing the vision of the brand. It was finally a bit more than just me and my intern in my basement,” she says.
“Dreaming Eli is about giving women their humanity and femininity back, and playing with stereotypes.” -Elisa Trombatore
Poetry and mythology thread through most of Elisa’s work. Her S/S 2025 collection drew inspiration from the myth of Scylla and Charybdis, the sea monsters who guarded Sicily’s waters in Homer’s Odyssey. Using elements that society has historically used to control women, from corsetry to concepts of femininity itself, Elisa transforms them into tools of empowerment.
“The scope of the collection was to take these women and show how they’ve been described as monstrous and scary figures,” she says. “But it’s about giving them their humanity and femininity back and playing with these stereotypes, from the monster to the woman and vice versa.”
Her most recent F/W 2025 collection, “Between My Heart and Ribs,” explores the female body as the only true “home.” Elisa says the collection is inspired by the line “you can’t make homes out of human beings / someone should have already told you that” in the poem For Women Who Are Difficult to Love by poet Warsan Shire. “The collection is about embracing the trauma and pain and understanding that you can’t make a home of anyone else if not yourself,” she says.
Despite the conceptual depth, Dreaming Eli remains grounded in craftsmanship. Everything is produced in their London studio by hand. “We don’t produce in factories so everything is extremely slow, but each piece is unique,” she says. “We can reproduce it five times, and each time it’s going to look a bit different. That gives so much value to the individual piece because no other will ever be the same.”
The brand’s signature techniques include embossed silk crushed onto corsets and a wax treatment that transforms silk into a structured, malleable material. This technique was born when Elisa wanted to create puffer jackets without using synthetic materials.
“I don’t use any synthetic fabric like polyester and nylon. I wasn’t sure how to create a puffer jacket if all I used was lace and silk. After some research I was like, ‘wow, if I wax the silk, it’ll become waterproof.’”
Dreaming Eli’s “Dark Embrace,” featured on the cover of Sixtysix’s Issue 15, includes the label’s first puffer jacket, though not in the way most people imagine one. This version is corseted, oversized, and waterproofed using the studio’s wax technique instead of synthetic fabrics. The brand’s ballerina platform shoes lace up the calf, extending the silhouette.
The recent introduction of knitwear and the signature ballerina platform shoes represents her desire to create a full lifestyle around the Dreaming Eli woman. The platforms, which blend ballet and pole dance aesthetics, have become particularly popular. Lola Young recently wore them on her album cover, a moment that caught Elisa by surprise. “One day I opened Instagram and I was like, ‘what? Those are my shoes!’” she says. “They look like sexy stripper shoes, but they also look like pretty ballerina shoes. They’re actually comfortable even though they look scary!”
This expansion has helped the brand gain traction with select boutiques, with H. Lorenzo in Los Angeles as their main stockist. This September also marks a significant milestone: their first catwalk show in London, followed by their debut at Paris sales showrooms with the British Fashion Council. “I’m very excited to see how the selection is going to go, what’s going to sell, what not,” she says. “I think that’s the biggest case study you can do.”
As she prepares for her catwalk debut, Elisa is already thinking about the next chapter. “Right now, I’m getting to know the Dreaming Eli woman on a deeper level,” she says. “The more I know what she buys, the more I know who she is.”
Model: Victoria Navarro. Art Direction by Abigail Grohmann. Hair and makeup by Katrina Graham, The Rock Agency. Styling by Autumn Woody
A version of this article originally appeared in Sixtysix Issue 15.
