Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Fi Paziana was an investment banker based in Milan. Although successful, her dream was to pursue her love of fashion full time. She’d worked in the industry before and had even designed clothes for royalty, but hadn’t found the right opportunity to launch her brand.
Fi Paziana's healthy clothes
Everything changed on July 12st 2022. Fi posted a video to her TikTok channel asking for inspiration. She’d been working hard developing a ‘smart fabric’ that supported vitamin D absorption, but needed a nudge in the right direction with how to deploy it.
The response was overwhelmingly positive. Her clip went viral and she was left in no doubt as to what to do next.
But how did she get there in the first place?
Research indicates that at least a billion people suffer from a variety of health problems linked to insufficient vitamin D, be that from lack of sunlight or - perhaps counterintuitively - too much fear of sunlight. Women of South Asian heritage, even those living in sunny climates, are the worst affected and often, it’s because the clothes they wear can prevent them from absorbing sufficient vitamin D.
Fi had been working tirelessly to develop a fabric that was luxurious, comfortable, strong but that also allowed for vitamin D to be absorbed. And with her new found feedback, she now knew how to put her fabric to work; with a range of modest wear under the brand name Vylet®️.
She explains: “Vylet®️ allows women to completely cover up but at the same time will filter the sunlight to allow the UVB rays responsible for Vitamin D production to pass through. The contact of these UVB rays to the skin interact with a protein called 7-DHC, converting it into vitamin D3, the active form of vitamin D.
“My father is a doctor, a bone specialist who has been studying the effect of bone metabolism for over 30 years. He was the first to tell me that there were problems in specific populations. That was my first breakthrough. The second was a very special person who convinced me that I shouldn’t be scared and that I should put myself out there and see what kind of response I would get.”
So on that advice, Fi summoned the power of social media, asking her ‘wonderful and ever-growing community’ for their take on every element of the clothing - colour and texture to design and cut. Her channel now has millions of views.
It all started on TikTok.
“This fabric is unique. With the right support, I believe it has the power to really change lives.” says this inspirational entrepreneur.
Fi says she is on a mission to free women, allowing them to wear what they want without sacrificing their body’s ability to absorb vitamin D. She also to celebrate the “grace, strength and sophistication” that modest fashion gives its wearers.
Discover her newly launched capsule collection at https://www.fimilano.com/
Tagged in Vitamin D