Dario Meet Tubiana
A rising star of Italian knitwear design, Dario loves to create fashionable, modern knits by playing with brioche, cables and Icelandic lopapeysa traditions
DARIO TUBIANA is a young Italian designer who has been wowing us with his modern interpretations of classic lopi sweaters, and his creative ways with colourwork. He has been publishing his patterns on Ravelry only since 2016, but he is quickly developing into an exciting designer to watch.
Formerly a make-up artist in Milan, and a student of Christianity and contemporary Judaism, Dario learnt the basics of knitting as a child but, like so many of us, only began knitting seriously as an adult.
“Most of the sweaters I used to wear were hand-knitted by my mum,” Dario recalls. “I always found it fascinating that she could create an entire sweater from a bunch of balls of yarn, and the fact that she used to knit made the whole thing even more magical, because I was seeing all the pieces becoming a garment overnight!
“I asked her to teach me, and she gave me some yarn and a pair of needles, and showed me what to do. I didn’t have much patience, though, so I gave up very soon. It was only many years later, after leaving university, that I found myself taking those same needles and asking my mum again to teach me again - and I have never stopped knitting since!”
As soon as he began to develop his skills and confidence, Dario started creating circular yoked sweaters for himself, both bottom-up and top-down – and before long, he started designing them, too. “I am totally in love with lopapeysa sweaters, and my first original design was ‘Prismatic Dusk’, an Icelandic sweater with a circular yoke that I designed inspired by the dominant colours of the sunset,” he says.
Dario’s first pattern for The Knitter was a huge scarf called ‘Geometric Chaos’ – “so called because I designed it in brioche and used syncopated stitches in order to create a geometric shape,” he explains. “Brioche and colourwork knitting are definitely the two techniques I prefer the most! I knitted both ‘Prismatic Dusk’ and ‘Geometric Chaos’ in the summer - not the best season to knit such patterns - but despite the hot weather I could not detach myself from the projects. I wanted to finish them to see the final result, and I have to say I was rather chuffed at the end!”
Dario is strongly influenced by architecture when creating stitch patterns and shapes for his work. “I like geometric shapes, and I like walking around looking at buildings and watching construction projects, and seeing how they match one another, or how they even overlap.
“In terms of finding inspiration for colours, though, the story is a little different. Here in Italy, it still happens that people, after washing their clothes, hang them outside the window to dry. Well, when people do that they inadvertently create wonderful colour palettes! You can see hanging together one red T-shirt, one blue towel, two pink skirts and one yellow cardigan. Well, that’s a palette! It’s certainly a fun way to find ideas of what colours you’d like to use, and which colours look good together!”
As well as the shapes and colours around him in his native Italy, Dario has been inspired by the New Yorkbased design team Spencer Vladimir, known for its fashion knitwear. “I just love their cables, their sweaters, their ideas and collections. They manage to take a classic sweater and make it new and fresh.” He also cites the work of Britt-Marie Christoffersson in her book, Pop Knitting: “It’s a great book for gathering new ideas and get inspiration when you want to do something a little bit ‘out of the box’!” Dario’s first two sweater designs for
The Knitter, ‘Cadair Idris’ and ‘Thorri’, both used Lopi wool from Iceland, as it is his favourite yarn to work with. “I just love it!,” he says. “Unfortunately, it’s extremely hard to find it here in Italy. So every time I want some, I have to order it from Iceland, or buy some whenever I travel outside of Italy (an awesome excuse to travel!). Besides Icelandic wool, I also love to knit with alpaca and Shetland wool. I have some yarn that was given to me for my birthday, so today I’m busy making a yoked bottom-up sweater. I recently moved up north in Italy, and it’s very cold up here compared with Rome, so I do need some warm knits!”
So, what’s next for this adventurous designer? “I am very curious about Portuguese knitting. I tried to use this technique a couple of times and I had so much fun, but I never really felt confident enough to use it for an entire garment. I’ll definitely use it when I design a garment knitted entirely in reverse stocking stitch, since it’s a very convenient technique for purling. And isn’t that way of making the yarn go around your neck super-cool?”