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Carlo Volpi

Carlo Volpi

Carlo is a knitwear designer, creative director, and educator whose work bridges fashion, spirituality, and body psychotherapy through a deep exploration of the embodied experience.

Carlo Volpi is a knitwear designer and educator with over eighteen years’ experience in knitted textiles. A graduate of Goldsmiths College and the Royal College of Art, he is Creative Director at UPW in Hong Kong and teaches on the MA Fashion programme at the RCA. His interdisciplinary practice bridges design, body psychotherapy and spirituality, exploring the body as a site of creativity and transformation. Trained in Biodynamic Psychotherapy and sound therapy, and a long-term practitioner of Qigong, yoga and meditation, Carlo integrates movement, sound and mindfulness into design education, fostering a deeper, embodied engagement with material practice.

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Carlo’s practice extends beyond fashion into the fields of somatic awareness, psychotherapy and sound. He is a trainee body psychotherapist in Biodynamic Psychotherapy, having completed his training at the London School of Biodynamic Psychotherapy, and is also a qualified sound therapist. A long-term practitioner of Qigong, yoga and meditation, his work investigates the body as a site of perception, memory and transformation. Within his teaching, he integrates movement, sound and mindfulness to encourage students to engage with design as an embodied process. His interdisciplinary approach seeks to bridge design, healing and spirituality, proposing the body as a dynamic interface between material practice and consciousness.

Over the course of his career, Carlo Volpi has received several prestigious awards recognising his contribution to contemporary knitwear design. In 2016, he was awarded first prize in Who Is On Next?, the competition promoted by Vogue Italia and Pitti Imagine, celebrating emerging talent in Italian fashion. Earlier in his career, Carlo received the Haberdashers’, Cockpit and Framework Knitters Award (2014), which granted him a studio space at Cockpit Arts in London for one year.

In 2012, he was selected by the UK Hand Knitting Association as a finalist for the Knitted Textile Award and was also among the 24 designers chosen for Texprint, where he received the Body Award for the best fashion fabric. Through Texprint, his work was showcased internationally at Indigo in Paris and Interstoff Asia in Hong Kong.

Carlo has also been honored with awards from the Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters,The Campaign for Wool, and the Haberdashers’ Company, which recognised his innovative and expressive approach to knitwear design.

Carlo works as Creative Director of UPW, a large spinner of sustainable yarns based in China.