MAISON OCTAVIAN

Creativity is a way of discovering our extraordinary inner power, becoming better, performing, getting closer to our aspirations and fulfilling them. For designers, it is maybe the most important instrument, which charges their work with meanings that go beyond common expectation. The stronger the visual imagery becomes, the more the attention and interest for their creations will increase.
In this constellation, the project „Sagesse d’une Muse“ was designed to highlight the power and value of individual awareness for sustainability, pleading for safeguard and promotion of the cultural diversity of humanity and its constant ability over time to facilitate a mutual understanding between people, no matter of race, gender or age.

The actual trend of textile industry compromises not only the ability of future generations to rich their needs, diminishing dramatically natural resources and generating a high level of pollution. It equally involves the quality of life, in terms of health, education, culture, safety, international relationships and many others.

It is not completely rational to think that industry may change itself, if the triggers, like consumption, which incite a damaging hyper-production, are not put in the same equation.
A global change needs global solidarity and culture and education play primordial roles in communication. They have the capacity to animate people who believe in the same ideals. The quality of the environment and the future of the next generations should be the universal aim.
Having already a strong life experience in rural areas and knowledge about old technics in the creation of textiles, I found the inspiration in traditional costumes of the world. The goal was not to redesign them individually but to create a peaceful melange of specific particularities from different cultures.
The emphasis is placed on the narrative ability of fashion design to enable the assimilation of traditional symbols from all over the world by a pluralistic system, generating bridges between our identities and beliefs.
Besides making and wearing the popular costume, we must agree with a culture of it, with its spiritual and historical significance, understanding that it represents a factor of social cohesion and economic development. It is a collective creation, belonging to many successive generations, who have protected the most essential characteristics of authentic artistic creation: its unity and continuity, despite environmental, geographical or historical changes, technological evolution and the tendency towards globalisation.
Working only with regenerable resources, transforming them in materials that haven‘t been over-processed to get unnecessarily so much finishing, like usually in the textile industry nowadays, creating simple patterns to avoid the waste - these all details demonstrate that tradition has always had a strong sustainable character, also when the definition of sustainability wasn‘t yet popular.
The substantial aport of handwork, especially for embroideries and weaving, ennobles the costumes even more with long lasting value and signification.
In this collection, old techniques melt non-opulent, environmental-friendly materials ( biological cotton, silk and wool) and traditional symbols into a call to safeguard the beauty of our natural and cultural heritage and to generate and focus a sustainable life on stringent problems of humanity and our planet.
The handmade embroidery with running stitch and massive use of noncolor, black and raw white, unanimous accepted by any culture, keep the created works in a harmonious unity. An organic and dynamic character of the collection is completed by handmade pleats, buttons and different old techniques used in her execution. Many from the designed pieces can be worn in a large size scale, without any technical intervention.
The patterns have been thought to close the waste to none. Every apparently insignificant piece of leftover material assumed unnecessary was meant to be gathered in building a distinct, unexpected composition in an almost performative technique.
Pleated details that remind of Scottish Kilt or Japanese Hakama, waistband similar to Japanese Obi sash, bonded with Musubi knot, wide pants like in Vietnamese Ao Dai, elements from Borong skirt from the Philippines, Indian Sari, Turkish Caftan, Greek Kolonato Chemise, German or Austrian Dirndl, Balkans Aprons and Chemise, Azorean Capote - all make the collection to vibrate and speak out about the beauty and diversity of culture as a fundamental condition to sustainability.
Tradition is not static. It provides a foundation on which prolific creativity and innovation may build durable, keeping down a waisting and polluting production, in full concordance with a rational consumption and having constantly care and respect for nature and values that humanity inherited over generations.

From this perspective, with a strong moral dimension, the collection „Sagesse d’une Muse’ defines itself as a commitment to inspire minds and give a sense of universal value and responsibility.