Elisa Palomino

Elisa Palomino (born 1969), also known as Elisa Asuncion Palomino Perez She was raised in Cuenca, and when Palomino was a child, her mother had a painting restoration workshop. She began her PhD program in 2017 at the London College of Fashion with a focus on Indigenous Arctic fish skin. She then designed for Roberto Cavalli before moving to New York in 2008 to become a vice president of design for Diane Von Furstenberg. By 2012, she had moved to London and was showing her fourth collection at Madrid Fashion Week and London Fashion Week. Her brand was shown for a total of five seasons.

Academic career

In 2012, Palomino joined the faculty of Central Saint Martins as the director of BA Fashion Print department. In 2019, as an associate professor, she won a research grant from the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program for her project titled "Indigenous Arctic Fishskin Clothing: Cultural and Ecological Impacts on Fashion Higher Education". Her research was mentored by the Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian Institution. She has also worked with the FishSkin research project funded by the European Union. In 2021, fishskin bags and sneakers Palomino made with National Museum of Natural History anthropologists were shown in the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building exhibit "FUTURES", alongside earlier fishskin work in the museum collection.

Palomino has also taught at Polimoda, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Iceland Academy of the Arts, Academy of Art University, Fashion Institute of Technology, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, and Bunka Gakuen University.

Selected works Palomino, E. (2020). SDG 14 Life Below Water: Introducing fish skin as a sustainable raw material for fashion. In I. B. Franco, T. Chatterji, E. Derbyshire, & J. Tracey (Eds.), Actioning the Global Goals for Local Impact (pp. 229–246). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9927-6_15 Palomino, E., & Rahme, L. (2020). Indigenous Arctic fish skin – A study of different traditional skin processing technology. Society of Leather Technologists and Chemists Journal from Northampton University, accepted for publication.