Vieilles Âmes is a New Fashion Brand For 'Old Souls'

Nicki Cozzolino uses deadstock fabric for her fresh, elegant styles inspired by the South of France, and New Yorkers can't get enough.

Published in Parson’s Fashion Studies Digest

Nicki Cozzolino appears effortlessly chic on the block in Greenpoint where she is hosting the  pop-up for her Nice-based brand, Vieilles Âmes. She moves from person to person, as energized as her bright blush skirts or glistening metallic pants. I begin thumbing through the outdoor racks. 

This trendy Brooklyn neighborhood boasts the studios of Willy Chavarria and Alix of Bohemia, and yet Cozzolino’s flowing silks have a magnetism. Silk organza blouses with gathered puff sleeves, pastel blazers and trousers, and silver bias-cut skirts stand out. One cinched-waist raincoat is rendered an unapologetic pink that could stop traffic. I think: “These clothes are too beautiful to be sold outside!” 

Vieilles Âmes is buoyed by Cozzolino’s big energy, but the garments leave a small environmental footprint. Cozzolino constructs all her pieces from deadstock fabrics sourced  from the south of France. In fact, Vieilles Âmes in French for old souls — which is fitting for a brand that uses old fabrics for its elegant and contemporary styles. 

“Old souls has this nice, positive, and warm feeling,” Cozzolino says. “We really all are old souls.”

Cozzolino has spent the past nine years in Nice, but she is no stranger to New York. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, in the 1980s, she admits that her parents weren't very fashionable. “My dad was this very Brooklyn badboy” who wore leather fanny packs and fur boots, she says. “Everybody thought he was in the mafia.” 

Since childhood, “I had always been creatively inclined,” Cozzolino recalls. “Going into my room and creating — that was my thing. It was something I did my whole  life.” 

She was initially interested in various artistic mediums, including photography and graphic design, “but fashion design was this thing that incorporated all of it,” she says. She ended up pursuing fashion at Parsons, where she “fell in love with the craft.” 

“It was so creatively inspiring,” she says of her time at the school.

After graduating in 2008, Cozzolino went to work with the designer Richard Chai. In 2011, she started her own line, Nicki Cozzolino, of mostly black items at an upper contemporary price point, with pieces up to $1,700. (Items in her current line are under $400.)  

“That was my rebel phase period,” she says. After losing her father in her early twenties, Cozzolino looked to fashion to escape. “I started smoking cigarettes. I started partying. I started going to the underground of New York.” But it was not sustainable, and she closed her company in 2015. “After running for a decade at over 100mph… I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what I was running towards. I was just running.” 

A trip to Nice in 2015 changed Cozzolino’s trajectory. “I remember coming here, and… my soul was like, You need to be here. In this sunlight. In this ease.” She moved there and set her sights on creating “a brand that inspires confidence in women.”

It's no coincidence that the quality of Cozzolino’s fabrics caught my eye. “My first step [in creating a garment] is fabric,” she shares. “There’s an understanding  of the form immediately when I meet the fabric.” She eventually found a Parisian patternmaker in the south of France who connected her with “an amazing but expensive fabric shop” that she relies on for her materials today. “It’s like the treasure chest of Ali Baba. The oldest trims. I get lost diving. It feels like I’m digging through treasures. This endless warehouse of deadstock fabric.”

The collection’s rich palettes are equally captivating. Cozzolino has always been drawn to color. “My first brand was very colorful,” she says. Then, feeling pressure to make it “more New York,” black subsumed her once-kaleidoscopic collections. Now, in Nice, she’s surrounded by vibrant hues, including yellow and red roofs and the sea. “It makes me happy, and I think my clothes make people happy,” she says. “They’re full of joy and sunshine. And we need that.” 

Her US-based clients frequently ask when she’s opening a store. For now, she hosts seasonal popups a few times a year around New York City and Paris — in addition to her Nice-based showroom. “It’s something different in the market, especially in New York. I feel like I’m still the New York woman that knows what that woman is looking for so that when she finds my  brand she’s like, This is a yes.” 

At a recent popup at the Chelsea-based Not-A-Normal Market, shoppers gushed over her clothes. “This skirt fits like a glove,” exclaimed one of her clients, modeling a rose satin skirt. Another pointed to a pair of purple pants and cooed, “These are so gorgeous!”  

Like the ocean between Cozzolino’s worlds, Vieilles Âmes honors the dualities in many  women’s lives. The oscillation between playfulness and maturity. The coexistence of a spirit that  is young and vieilles. Maybe the magic is that her designs seem to shorten the distances between  these worlds.