ABOUT CICAEDIA

CICAEDIA was born from a mispronunciation. I said cicada wrong, and it stuck to me. I then shaped it from Cicadoidea, the insect’s scientific classification, until the spelling felt legible. I wanted something that sounded European and felt ancestral; engineered, hard to pronounce, hard to forget. A word that looked like it had lineage even if I had just written it. That’s part of how this all began: not with a business plan, not with a logo, but with a word that didn’t exist until I gave it meaning.

I’m Yitzhak Rosenberg. I created CICAEDIA in 2021, it was founded by Sheryl Haut and my late father, David Rosenberg. His influence shaped the foundation of this house, not as something mourned, but as something carried forward. What began as something deeply personal has become something far larger: a language, a living archive, a system for translating memory, instinct, and story into form. CICAEDIA isn’t a brand. It’s a way of thinking about clothes; not just as objects to be worn, but as worlds to be built and lived in. It doesn’t stop at garments; it builds the context around them.

Today, CICAEDIA exists as a house with three distinct but interconnected arms; three facets of one language, each born from the same DNA but reflecting each unique personality. The womenswear line is the cinematic anchor, where feeling forms a silhouette and emotion is built into something beautifully sensual. It reflects the CICAEDIA woman. Composed and chaotic, she isn’t defined by the clothes but amplified by them, each garment a piece of her world in that moment. She lives in fantasy but moves through reality, the kind of woman you remember even when you can’t recall her face. She isn’t trying to be understood. She’s trying to be felt. Then came ATELIER CICAEDIA, the house’s heart. Debuting in 2023, It is the experimental core, a space where ideas are pushed to their creative and technical extremes and where one-of-one work takes shape. It began as a laboratory for expanding the language of the house and has become a place for clients who want to bring anything, from a word to a memory to a vision, into physical form. Finally, there is CICAEDIA UOMO, launched in 2025, the moment instinct overtook feeling. It is a unisex menswear line born from lived experience rather than reference, exploring clothing through the lens of philosophy and psychology, a dramatized reflection of my own mind and its questions. Together, these three bodies form a single system, differentiated only by the voices of the individuals I imagine them dressing.

I graduated from Parsons School of Design in May of 2025, but you wouldn’t know unless someone told you. I never was, and will never be good with any academic system not built for me. Parsons was supposed to be the pinnacle; the sanctum where many designers are anointed, but to me it was a New York State DMV dressed as a high-institution classroom; more concerned with a predetermined process of creativity than raw intuition or emotional feeling. The air was stagnant, filled with conversations of wearability and commerce from professors who’d never sold clothes, and students eager to hear feedback they hadn’t already gotten. And when the end came, when those thesis deadlines circled, the BFA graduation loomed, and even Vogue came to crown the chosen few; I ignored it. I didn’t walk at graduation, I didn’t participate in the BFA show. Instead, I was humiliated into presenting a mock final I never intended to attend. A performance staged for their late-stage approval that I didn’t even attempt in earnest. And yet, somehow, I graduated anyway. I left with the degree quietly, and without fanfare or ceremony. And that mattered. Because it meant that CICAEDIA was built not as their success story, but as mine alone. It wasn’t the end. It was the beginning. One that finally belonged to me.

CICAEDIA became the answer to everything those institutions could never give me. It’s the container for everything I make. Fashion design is the heart, but it’s never the whole story. At heart; I’m an artist. I learned to sculpt. To weld. To build sets. I design graphics. I compose sound. I photograph. Mediums are just tools and I’ve learned to switch them out as needed. If sewing feels claustrophobic, I can melt metal. If sketching feels too flat, I can visualize and literally build the world the piece belongs in. The operation stays the same; only the instruments change. What began as a one-person practice has grown into a larger organism: a house sustained by a team of full and part-time artisans, art directors, stylists, producers, photographers, and creatives who bring their own precision to the work. My role has expanded with it, not just as a designer, but as the brands creative lead, now tasked with defining the unique visual and philosophical worlds that surround the clothes. CICAEDIA remains fiercely personal, but it thrives on collaboration. We invite other voices into our space, knowing that the worlds we build together expand the language of the house and shape its future.

My shows aren’t fashion runways in the traditional sense. They’re emotional sequences. Worlds. Every garment is a character now defined. Every detail a part of the story. I don’t just want to show a dress. I want to control the air around it; how it smells, how it sounds, how it feels against your skin. This isn’t presentation. It’s immersion. I welcome you into the world of CICAEDIA. Every decision matters. Set design, casting, sound, light, jewelry, none of it is decoration. It’s choreography. It’s punctuation. I want people to leave my shows with something lodged in their chest. Not nostalgia. Not fantasy. Something sharper. More intimate. Something that lingers. CICAEDIA isn’t here to decorate the body. It’s here to dissect it, question it, rebuild it. It speaks in the language of memory and humanity. It’s not about surface or status. It’s about translating a life ecstatic, wounded, evolving, into form. Everything begins with something real: a death, a lover, a city, a breakdown. From there, it builds outward into silhouettes that carry weight. This isn’t fashion as product. It’s fashion as storytelling. As confrontation. As experiment. CICAEDIA isn’t trend-driven. It’s a feeling I can’t shake a dream, a memory, a loss. I don’t need a plot. I need a pulse.

Fashion history to me, is a reference point, not a rulebook. I think about houses like Versace and their former audacity, eroticism, and spectacle; how that language was dismissed as too much when it debuted. That dismissal is an open invitation. Maximalism isn’t dead; it just needs a new vocabulary. CICAEDIA is my attempt to write it into the 21st century, where rock-and-roll spectacle, subversive sexuality, and intellectual precision can exist intertwined without apology.

I design for people who want intensity. Not loudness, but presence. I don’t want my work to whisper. I want it to speak clearly; to seduce, provoke, even mourn. I believe the right garment changes you. It shifts how you walk, how you stand, how you exist in the world. It turns a hallway into a runway, a Tuesday into a scene. CICAEDIA is for people who collect stories. Who want to wear something that already knows something about them. I believe the right piece changes your posture, your pace, your gaze. It rewires the way you move through a room. It’s not about being louder than anyone else, it’s about becoming undeniable.

CICAEDIA isn’t for everyone. That’s the point. It’s meant to stick with you, not blend in. It’s not quiet. It’s not waiting for permission. It’s inevitable. And it’s alive. This is not just a brand. It’s a language. The thing that keeps coming back every summer.

It emerges. And it sings.