Emilio Barba

DESIGNER

Born on the 13th October, 1979 in Gaeta, Italy, to a surveyor Giovanni Barba and a treasury clerk Anna Padula, Emilio is the youngest of three children. He grew up between Salerno and Gaeta where he spent most of his summers with his seamstress grandmother Giulia Arzano, where he started showing passion and interest in fashion design, making dresses for his mother. He moved to the UK in 2000 where he enrolled at Liverpool University and earned a first class degree in Business Studies with a major in Marketing.

While in the UK he worked for global organizations such as Royal Jordanian, US Airways, Qatar Airways and collaborated with some of the leading fashion houses including Dior. In 2010 he designed his first bag collection using expensive materials combined with sustainable and recycled ones. During Paris fashion week Spring/Summer 2011 he met the designer Svetoslav Kolchagov and soon after they began working on their new venture “Kolchagov Barba”.