The Bite Magazine - Autumn/Winter 2025 - Issue 38

bitefashion nous moonsuits with masculine shoulders, iridescent cor- seted dresses with inflatable curves, and sculptural sleeves that billow like cosmic clouds. Each look is an evolution of Milleder’s signature, the conversation between body and textile, what clothes conceal and what they reveal. At the heart of ‘Candy Moon’ lies the designer’s ongoing fas- cination with form and volume. The silhouettes are never static as they bloom, expand, and hover. Fabrics are engi- neered to move as if breathing. Sleeves become wings; bows transform into three-dimensional constellations. The gar- ments embody the paradox of architectural yet soft, struc- tured yet alive weightlessness. “I’ve always been interested in how clothing can create its own gravity,” Milleder once said in an interview, and that fascination becomes literal. The palette tells its own story with deep greys and blacks, symbolic of the infinite void, meet pastel pinks, baby blues, and iridescent lilacs, tones that feel sugary and celestial. It’s a spectrum that balances shadow and light, reality and reverie. Metallic silvers and glossy blacks punctuate the softness, like lunar craters gleaming under the sun. At the same time, psy- chedelic prints, swirling candy tones stretched into abstract geometry, return as a signature motif, grounding the collec- tion in continuity while expanding its cosmic reach. ‘Candy Moon’ emotional register is distinctly feminine, but never fragile. Alice, reimagined as Milleder’s muse, is no longer the curious child tumbling down a rabbit hole. She’s a grown woman who is intelligent, rebellious, playful, and unapologetically powerful. Her world is not one of escape, but of authorship. Each piece she wears becomes armour for sculptural, sensual, self-possessed imagination. The gar- ments collaborate with the body, turning movement into performance and identity into art. This synthesis of strength and softness defines Milleder’s vision of wearable art, a term that, in her hands, is neither pretentious nor abstract. The garments are meticulously constructed, but they also provoke emotion. They invite in- trospection. They’re designed to be worn, yes, but also to be felt. As the designer explains, “I want my pieces to awaken something personal, like a memory, a fantasy, a version of yourself you didn’t know was there.” That emotional intelligence sets this designer apart from her contemporaries. A graduate of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where she studied under Hussein Chalayan, Luke and Lucie Meier behind Jil Sander, and Grace Wales Bonner, she has cultivated a practice that bridges technol- ogy and tenderness. Her early experience at Iris van Herp- en’s Amsterdam studio in 2019 proved formative. Here, she learned how innovation can serve poetry, laser-cut precision can yield softness, and science can sculpt the surreal. That philosophy now runs through her brand. Since launching her eponymous label, Milleder has become one of Austria’s most compelling exports, a designer who treats fashion as a medium and a message. She won the Arts Thread Global Design Graduate Show in collaboration with Gucci in 2021 for her textile and embroidery work, followed by the Designer of the Year Award in 2023 and ongoing support from the Austrian Fashion Association. Her work has graced Vogue Portugal, Vogue Korea, Vogue Arabia, Cos-