Wilden.herbals meets / Interview with Laura Zura-Puntaroni of Festa Foresta

In the second week of December, we were guests of Festival Forest Jungle Market, an unusual Christmas market. A real jungle set up in the heart of Milan where you can take refuge from the cold and chaos of the city.

A far parte dell’evento non c’era solo una selezione degli articoli di moda di Festa Foresta, ma anche i profumi di Masque Milano,  la nuova collezione di candele di 23bassi e le piante di le Georgiche. E non potevano mancare le nostre tisane!

Festa Foresta is a brand born from the creative vision of Laura Zura-Puntaroni who is inspired by the key concepts of Nature and Enthusiasm. Each of her creations, designed and prototyped in Milan, is then made with the utmost attention to detail in small artisanal workshops. From the very beginning it seemed to us a project with a philosophy very much akin to our own, here is how she tells it.

Tell us about your background and education

I am trained as an architect, studied at the Milan polytechnic, and graduated in 2017. After working for a few years at a large studio in Milan, my brand was born in the spring of 2020. It was a particular time in my life when I realized that I needed to direct my path toward something that I completely enjoyed and that was totally my own. I jumped into this project with the desire to do something that reflected me and mirrored my world and my imagination. The project was born spontaneously without any great strategies or market studies, it is not something studied at a desk but an evolution of my being. That’s where Festa Foresta comes from.

How would you describe Festa Foresta?

Simple-because simplicity these days is perhaps the hardest thing to achieve-but also sustainable, spontaneous, and transparent.

What kind of work do you do on fabrics, how do you choose them, and how do you create patterns?

There is a part of research that I curate myself. First, through trade shows for sustainable materials, particularly lycre, stretch materials, and bathing materials. I like to have the opportunity to meet with suppliers and present my project.

Then the reports continue online, leading up to the longest part of testing that precedes final approval of the material. The timing depends on the collection but usually lasts for a whole year in which I try the pattern and fabric myself to understand the performance.

The design of the pattern does not always precede the choice of fabric; sometimes the opposite happens. In the case of our last collection, which was very small and made from a deadstock of silk and wool for example, I found the fabric first and then the patterns were born. In this case it is the pattern that has adapted to the characteristic of the fabric.

Although this rarely happens for costumes, because it is generally the fabric that goes to support the pattern.

How did the collaboration with Wilden.herbals come about?

It all begins in the world of architecture, through contacts or friendships in common from this sphere. We approached each other because I am a curious person by nature and because I found our values and ways of doing things related.

What I wanted to do in my own small way was to promote a brand that was similar to mine, that spoke a common language with mine and believed in the same things that I believe in. And also that it was done by the same kind of people.

Healthy and wild is the motto of wilden.herbals. What does it mean to you?

For me, being healthy is connected to the concept of feeling good about your body, which is central to my brand. It also approaches the concept of making peace with one’s body.

And then what could be better than the word “wild,” my brand being called “Forest Feast”?In one of my last collections, the one of underwear in biodegradable fabrics, one of the concepts was precisely this idea of the primordial woman, free, wild, unrestricted. When I think of this word I think of the feminine sphere that is central to my brand.