Walk round any cool neighbourhood in New York or Los Angeles and you’d be hard pressed not to see a Paloma Wool tote slung over someone’s shoulder. Compared with your average Erewhon or Daunt Books canvas bag, the brand’s tote is distinctive not only for its logo. Rounded with a slight ballooning at the bottom, and a little tie at the opening, it channels the current trend for boho — and is a free gift with purchases at the brand’s pop-ups.
The hype of the humble tote speaks to the cult success of Paloma Wool, an arty Instagram brand that in the past three years has evolved into a well-rounded label, encompassing women’s and menswear, accessories and footwear, with sales last year of €17mn. After hosting successful pop-ups in major cities around the world, including Barcelona, Milan, New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris and Seoul, the brand is now opening two permanent stores — one in Barcelona in February, and another in New York in April.
Founder and designer Paloma Lanna, who was born and raised in San Sebastián, Spain, was only 23 when she started the brand in 2014 (“Lana” means “wool” in Portuguese). Her fashion pedigree helped her navigate the industry: her parents founded Globe, a mid-priced womenswear brand that was big in Spain in the 1980s. Her mother, Paloma Santaolalla, who still runs the clothing label Nice Things, is an inspiration: “She’s one of my idols in terms of style,” says Lanna. “She’s very sophisticated, always super well dressed and super elegant. Not like me — I’m much more messy.”
Now based in Barcelona, Lanna launched Paloma Wool as an art project, with a collection of 15 numbered sweatshirts printed with analogue photography from her travels, alongside simple dresses and separates. The designs were an online hit, appealing to the candid, subtly feminine aesthetic that was prevalent on Instagram at the time, with accompanying lookbooks shot in dreamy, earthy locations.
The brand continued with the idea of marrying fashion with other creative disciplines, collaborating with local illustrators, painters and sculptors, including Barcelona-based artists Blanca Miró, who created a squiggly textile print, and furniture designer Cristian Herrera Dalmau, who made clothes racks and coat hangers.
Lanna’s first big hit came in 2017 with the Leandra shirt — a white button-up covered with line drawings of women’s bodies — that was catnip to influencers. Such figurative illustrations became a signature for Paloma Wool, with faces, bodies and other scenes covering the brand’s arty knits, T-shirts and dresses.
The look and feel of Paloma Wool is very different today, though, a change that can be pinpointed to the autumn/winter 2022 collection, which Lanna says marked a shift in design and aesthetic vision. “We had been doing a lot of strong colour pieces and psychedelic prints, but I felt super saturated by that and needed a change,” she says. “I wanted to do more subtle pieces that focused on pattern-making and new techniques.”
Presented at Barcelona’s MACBA Museum of contemporary art in the brand’s first runway show, the collection had a distinctly ’90s flavour, with grunge and minimalist influences and a palette of grey, khaki and brown. “It felt like a step forward from what we had been doing previously, more elevated and mature,” says Lanna.
“It was a risky bet in terms of the business, because we were selling well before that, and we took the decision to take Paloma Wool into another space that was more difficult and required a lot more in terms of quality and expectations,” adds the brand’s chief executive Pablo Feu, who is also Lanna’s husband. “But the business has had good drivers on it, and it’s been super positive, looking backwards.”
Feu details the brand’s retail presence, increased production quality and diversification as aiding its growth of the past three years. “We have expanded our core product categories to reduce reliance on sporadic hits, creating a more balanced collection,” he says.
Paloma Wool now shows at Paris Fashion Week: the brand’s spring/summer 2025 collection merged ’90s and noughties influences with low-rise trousers, layers of gauzy chiffon, halter-necks and boob tubes. Lanna this season also introduced the Paloma Wool man, who dresses in louche shirts, elevated trackpants and leather jackets. “We get a lot of men coming to try the clothes on in our pop-ups,” says Lanna of the inspiration for the launch.
The US is the brand’s biggest market, followed by the UK, although it is stocked globally from New Zealand to Germany. “Paloma Wool is a genuine brand, with [good] price-quality balance, focused on doing its job well without relying on hype, imitating others, or adding unnecessary design elements to stand out,” says Yasin Müjdeci, who owns the Berlin-based concept store Voo, where Paloma Wool is a bestseller. “Their high-quality knits are among my favourites, especially in these times when prices have skyrocketed.” Paloma Wool’s knitwear sits between £55 and £140, among the lower price bracket of Voo’s brands that include Miu Miu, Dries Van Noten and The Row.
Paloma Wool’s top-selling products today are the Archive pants — a straight-leg, mid-rise style with a mini skirt layered at the hip — the knitwear, and a leather trapeze handbag that the brand released for its 10th anniversary.
As well as opening two permanent stores, the brand will this year focus on maintaining profitability and independence, “so we don’t have any debt or additional investors, to keep it as a family business”, adds Feu. The duo also want to maintain local production in Spain and Portugal, which the brand has mostly done since the beginning, as well as its artist collaborations.
“This season we’ve collaborated with Anna Santangelo, who did some jewellery pieces for our summer show that were intended to make sounds, to go with an ASMR theme,” says Lanna. “Collaborating with artists has been super important, something we always want to keep doing. I’ve always prioritised the things that make me dream, and that I find beautiful, rather than trying to make more sales.”
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