I’m a dreamer, a child who loved to play with paper dolls cut out from an album, with the dresses to be colored and overlaid on the figurine.

I’m Annalisa Surace, designer and creator of IJO design. After graduating in architecture, I got the Master degree in Design Management at the Domus Academy, and this is where the idea was born.

My project became a reality in 2001 with the aim of exploring a new territory for those years and creating the union between craftsmanship and design. With IJO design I investigated issues that ten years later will become an essential prerequisite for a conscious business development, such as the recovery and enhancement of traditional workings of the territory, the continuous search for cultural references, traces of memory, and the link with the genius loci also expressed by the name IJO, ‘sole’ in griko, the ancient language of Magna Grecia.

The starting point is the house, and the creation of textile collections and furnishing accessories made with different traditional materials.

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But the passion for the fabric, where all the senses are involved, takes over and so my aesthetic research takes a precise path, that of the threads that wind on the frame.

Scarves also become a pretext for experimenting with the creation of unique pieces presented in art galleries or events and exhibitions of texile art.

Today IJO design is the combination of fashion, craftsmanship and design according to sustainable economic and environmental values, a production with an eco-sensitivity for the respect of the environment and the well-being of the person.

The IJO design collections are in fact made on ancient hand looms made of ancient olive wood in our small workshops in Puglia as the entire production chain, up to the finished garment.

The fabric, the true protagonist of the brand, is created to give shape to every single collection; the search for noble, certified fibers is combined with ancient techniques and refined workmanship, then deconstructed and transformed into clothes and accessories with simple geometric shapes, architectural inspiration.

In the endless possibilities offered by the intertwining of warp and weft, each unique piece woven  is created on a sketch in every minimum detail through the suggestion of a material metamorphosis that becomes the hallmark of the brand.

In the packaging phase the idea is that of the cloth without cuts, but completed with finishes and sartorial seams, exposed selvages, woven fringes, deliberately unfinished works in a game that recalls the story of a story of endless threads.

IJO design has a recognizable identity, a strong international attitude and is part of a context of research of new languages ​​in a growing sector such as that of sustainable luxury craftsmanship