Feature Friday: Frieda Lepold
Frieda Lepold’s creations have a timeless elegance—at once both strikingly modern in their appeal, yet anchored in historical silhouettes—which when combined with sumptuous textiles and immaculate tailoring, produces a portfolio of stunning designs.
“For me it has always been about bringing a picture I have in my head to life,” Frieda shared. “I love to create in any way, but with sewing, you start with an idea and it’s slowly taking shape right before your eyes until it’s something you can inspect from all sides, touch, wear, see how it moves, and I think that’s pure magic.”
For Frieda, her journey to couture-level construction has been just one small part of a lifelong passion for artistic pursuits. “I’ve always loved to be creative,” she explained. “When I was little I used to draw a lot, then I got older and loved to draw hyper realistic drawings—I started to take my own pictures, which got me into photography. This was something I really enjoyed because it was another way to create a picture or composition of sorts. For this, I then slowly started to create outfits which finally led me into sewing.”
Frieda continued, “So it was always more about bringing a picture I have in my head to life, and sewing is a more recent development if you look at the whole picture, I think. My newest creative ‘obsession’ is filming my sewing projects. I love this extra layer of creating and composing, and it brings me a lot of joy to have fun with a sewing project in more than one way.”
And this love of sewing grew hand in hand with a love for historical clothing. “The development from drawing to photography to sewing happened really fast after I finished school, and since I always knew I wanted to have a creative job, I decided to give sewing a go and started my training as a tailor,” she explained. “At the same time, I really got into historical clothing because of a trip I planned with some friends, and I think that because both things happened at the same time, this is still something that belongs together for me somehow. So past eras of fashion, and especially the 18th century, have always been my biggest inspiration and something that is visible in a lot of my designs.”
But while a nod to history is a key part of her work, her true creative muse is structure. “My biggest inspiration has always been past decades of fashion, but I noticed that in the end it always comes down to interesting shapes or silhouettes that make me exited to create something new,” Frieda explained. “I always prefer to sew structured dresses with dramatic shapes, and so this is often the first thing I have in mind about a new design before all the seams take shape,” she added.
“My favorite thing is to incorporate stays into a dress and try to give them a modern look,” Frieda continued. “So dresses where I could incorporate that are some of my favorites. But one of my favorite dresses will always be the starry night dress, I don’t really know why it excites me so much, but dresses inspired by the night sky are something I feel really drawn to, and I feel like this design works really well—so that’s a dress I’m really proud of.”
Yet Frieda is always up for the challenge of a new project, particularly one that stretches her creative muscles. When asked about some of her more demanding works, she shared, "Two of my most recent dresses come to mind here. The first one is an 1860s inspired ballgown I made for Queen Astraea; it was a really big project where I added the stars of the northern hemisphere with beads onto the skirt, which actually took ages."
“And another really challenging project was the one I made after that where I tried to mimic armor using fabric," she added. "This dress probably needed the most mock-ups I’ve ever made for one project until I got everything right.”
This type of meticulous work isn’t created overnight, and Frieda is passionate about not allowing the format of social media to warp the perception of just how long a detailed design can take from start to finish. “I know that in times of same day delivery, making of TikTok’s with time lapse progress shots, and fast fashion, it sometimes can get lost how much time goes into a handmade design,” she said. “But especially when it’s a custom dress, it is unavoidable that it takes months to make a commission. That’s actually one of the reasons why I started my YouTube channel—to show how much time and energy goes into a project and that finishing it does take a lot of time.”
You can find Frieda’s work on her website, friedalepold.de, and follow her on Instagram (@friedalepold) and YouTube (@friedalepold) for more inspiration!