In Conversation with Kā

Interview with Raquel Santos, Founder and Creative Director
 

What does KĀ mean to you?
KĀ, for me, is the breath between worlds… it bridges the formless into form. In Egypt, they call it the subtle body, the light body. It’s a remembering. You see Kā, but mostly you feel it, you resonate with it as a frequency. It’s the frequency of the embodiment of your true essence, your original blueprint. It’s when you are fully yourself: unbound, effortless, and radiant.

Do you feel that clothing expresses something or connects us to something deeper within?
Clothing, to me, is both communion and expression. A bridge. A tactile reminder that our skin is sacred and beautiful, and the way we wrap ourselves is part of the ritual of remembrance and play.

You often describe your pieces as “second skins.” What makes clothing feel like it truly belongs to someone?
I call many of my pieces “second skins.” For me, a piece truly belongs to someone when it doesn’t impose, but reveals and potentiates your unique original blueprint. When the garment listens. It belongs when it harmonizes with the inner architecture of the wearer not just physically, but energetically. A second skin feels like a homecoming, not a costume.

Where does your design process begin – with fabric, form, or sensation?
My design process begins with sensation. Reading a ripple in the field. Sometimes a fragment of a dream, a familiar scent, a pulse behind the solar plexus, an ancient ache, a divine thread that feels like home, true, and already alive in my field, ready to be expressed and liberated. I let that ripple guide me to the fabric, then let the fabric guide me back to form.

How do you translate something invisible – like a memory, a feeling, or a silence – into a physical garment?
My first three collections were framed by color. I wanted to work through opposites or complementary hues and weave them into existence. Nostalgia is red and green. Violeta is purple and yellow. Womb to Word will be orange and blue. And of course, black and white hold the paradox alive—for transmutation. I design through silence and sound, through stillness and motion. I don’t design onto the fabric, I channel through it. I attune to the tone beneath the experience, then let that frequency choose the color palette, texture, cut, and breathability of the piece.

Is your creative process structured, or more intuitive and fluid?
My creative process comes all at once in a big wave, then ripples out. So it feels pretty fluid. But when it comes to bringing it into form, I’m still experimenting, finding the most efficient ways to bring it to life. I don’t follow the way the fashion industry operates, or its calendar. My way of living is cyclical and intuitive, so it’s been a challenge for me and my team to create a thread that honors that.

What does it mean to you to design from frequency rather than from function or trend?
I don’t follow trends. I create from resonance from what feels true, alive, and intelligent. Not reactive to what the world demands, unless it feels relevant and catalyzes something. Designing from frequency means listening to what wants to come through not forcing what “should.” I’m not trying to be different. What turns me on is truth.

What was the emotional landscape behind Nostalgia, your first collection?
The emotional landscape behind Nostalgia was a soft, ancient ache, a haunting beauty. The way light filters through old lace curtains. A longing for something I’ve never fully experienced on this planet, but always felt alive in me. It held both grief and sweetness, a desire to infuse time and space with tenderness, unconditional love, and beauty.

What are you currently discovering about yourself, or your work?
Through Kā, I discover all the ways I’m still not free, or still hiding from my full potential. I put everything that I teach and learn into practice to fully embody the formless into form, and the form into formless. It teaches me to stay true…
To be patient. To trust. To discern. To always follow my intuition.
And to offer love and compassion to myself and to all.