Priscavera

Priscavera was founded in 2014 in New York by Slovakian-American designer Prisca Franke (formerly Prisca Vera Franchetti) as a contemporary womenswear ready-to-wear brand specifically focused on what Franke described as 'a deliberately Slovakian-Czech-Mitteleuropa visual sensibility rebuilt as contemporary luxury.' The brand's foundational thesis was specific and culturally rigorous: produce a contemporary womenswear vocabulary that drew explicitly on Central-European folk-craft, post-Soviet visual culture, and the architectural-tailoring tradition of Mitteleuropean modernism (Adolf Loos, Otto Wagner, the Wiener Werkstätte aesthetic legacy). The Priscavera vocabulary settled around several recurring elements: deconstructed Mitteleuropa-aesthetic tailoring with deliberate-asymmetric construction, soft-shouldered single-breasted blazers in Italian-mill wool, deconstructed jersey separates referencing post-Soviet-era utility-clothing aesthetics, hand-printed silk-and-cotton shirts with Slovakian folk-art motif references, and a colour palette anchored to washed-black, oxblood, washed-charcoal, ecru, soft-pink, and the brand's recurring use of saturated red, royal blue, and natural-indigo. The brand has presented at New York Fashion Week each season since 2017. The brand is independent and held by Franke. Priscavera operates a flagship retail concept in New York (Soho — the brand's home neighbourhood) plus international wholesale through SSENSE, MATCHES, MR PORTER, the Webster, Dover Street Market, Lane Crawford, Boontheshop, and a small set of carefully chosen contemporary-luxury-womenswear specialty retailers globally. The brand has been one of the more culturally specific post-2014 New York debuts, with the deliberately-Mitteleuropa-cultural-positioning specifically anchoring the brand inside the contemporary 'multi-cultural-fashion-language' conversation that has emerged in NYC menswear-and-womenswear since 2015.