SOMA Magazine Spring Fashion : Page 47
“The industry is getting less arrogant, which is good because it’s very important to be aware of reality, and I certainly like to think a lot about what’s happening around me.” ferent techniques and ways of doing things. I think it’s important to be close with a product and apply to it a sense of personality, where at the end of the day you can see that it’s not just another mass-produced product. Who initially inspired you to start designing? In my family, we have very strong personalities, like my mum and my auntie. It might sound stereotypical but my mum was very eclectic in the way she would be taking fabric and making it her own by changing the appear-ance of it. Later on I travelled quite a lot to Austria and Germany with her, learning about different characters, culture and ways of dressing that were different to my Greek upbringing. Greek woman are very mystical and the color black is such a perfect color to wear in Mediterranean countries because it’s a color linked to emotions and to history. In a sense that’s something I always like to use in the collections because black needs perfec-tion in the silhouette and in the cut in order to make sense. Are your parents supportive of your chosen career path? They are very sup-portive. My mum is still very creative and opinionated. She comes to all the shows and tells me what she likes and what she doesn’t. My dad is more business-like and asks me the non-creative ques-tions. Thankfully they allowed me to follow my passion from a very early age. I left home at age 15 and started working in fashion. You also worked as a Creative Director at Halston alongside Sarah Jessica Parker. What was that like? It was incredible, a huge learning curve and amazing to be linked to such a notorious brand. It’s linked to such an infamous time in fashion, it wasn’t only about fashion itself, it was also how the music and political situations made people exaggerate in a way that probably nowadays is impos-sible. The extravagance of that time made such a huge difference in the way you would present yourself. It was an incredible expe-rience to be able to travel to America so often and so I was very happy to be able to do that. Obviously it was very hard to manage two labels without any design team; I was the only designer for both collections. What did you take away from working there? It helped my confidence, as I was scared I couldn’t manage without a design team under-neath me. I was proud to be able to balance both and to have met all these incredible creatives such as George Cortina, who helped me so much the days before the show. There’s such an incredible energy to New York. You briefly touched on Halston’s influence on a certain time in fashion. What are your thoughts on the current state of the fashion industry? It’s getting better. The industry is getting less arrogant, which is good because it’s very important to be aware of reality, and I certainly like to think a lot about what’s happening around me. The process of making garments is very important to encourage the industry to be more pragmatic about where we’re standing at the moment and how we can promote fashion in a different way. People don’t have to look at celebrities to realize what they want. It should be more about personality and their own way of being opinionated. That’s why London is so important at the moment—because it’s a breeding ground of new ideas and peo-ple are not scared of creating something that’s different. 47
Publication List
