Start of my fashion career and birth of Nephilim!
Thinking about the current state of the world and all the things I had to postpone, one significant event comes to my mind. The Burning Man. Festival that inspired my first Nephilim collection, was my graduation work and started my fashion journey.
One very interesting thing is that I end up in fashion by pure accident or luck, however youchose to call it! In early 2014, I finished college and decided for my graduation work to do
ceramic because I am a product designer and was schooled that way. I started working on ceramic and in the meantime, I developed tendonitis so bad the I was forbidden to even use my arm for at least half a year. Postponing for that long to finish school was no option for me at all. I was trying to think about alternatives, what else I love and what I could make for the graduation work.
Right at that time Burning Man was held, I was watching the photos form that year and alight bulb lit inside my head. I’m going into fashion and not just any fashion. Festival fashion it Is! A little bit of Mad Max vibes, structural and avant-garde but hey it needs to represent me and there is no better way.
I have two great loves in my life and they are design and dance. For me, there is no way to
choose between the two of them and I am at my happiest when I have a chance to combine these
two and make it my calling in life.
The Burning Man festival is my ultimate festival life goal. I personally love dystopian aesthetic and BM is definitely that. Combine it with art, principles they go by, dance and I dare to call it my personal heaven on earth. That was the inspiration for my graduation work, my first conceptual collection Nephilim and how my journey started.
First of all shoot-out to my parents that helped me create that first collection, as I was injured oftentimes my mom was sewing and my dad was cutting geometric shapes for wings that were part of that. Now, when I look at those photos of the making-of process, that was truly a humble begging. A doll we made from the duct tape. I never sew before in my life, mom did a lot but never anything as crazy as stuff I imagined to create. Then working on the stability of the wings, their integrity and composition. Those were definitely some crazy days with a lot of tears and smiles. But eventually, after a few months of hard work through my injury, it was finally done!
I am very proud of that first collection, maybe more now than before, because I was having such a hard time to stop and look back at what I achieved. But here it is! Conceptual fashion collection made for an alternative group of people with extreme self-expression.
The name itself Nephilim has such a deep meaning and story behind it but that I will leave for another post.
I wanted to create a collection that will help you bring out your true warrior within and help you find your inner strength and creativity in otherwise bleak world that seeks clones. Especially in the world of fast fashion.
