Designerfashion.biz Tatiana Pogrebnyak wins the Triumph Fashion Award 2006 »

Tatiana Pogrebnyak wins the Triumph Fashion Award 2006

On November 15th, Tatiana Pogrebnyak was honoured with the Triumph Fashion Award 2006 and 4,000 €. The celebration and awards show took place in Vienna, Austria. Tatiana Pogrebnyak, who was born in Ukraine and now lives in Israel, won with designs on the theme “Dress up for Mozart – Rock up Rococo!”

An international jury elected her design work out of more than 1,500 drawings from designers all over the world, which have interpreted Mozart and Rococo in a modern way.

Kirsten Hiller from the fashionoffice.org press room has some more information on the topic:

Tatiana Pogrebnyak, your creations for the Triumph International Fashion Award look very “flowerish”. What was the inspiration for your designs?

Tatiana Pogrebnyak: “My designs’ inspiration comes from a research on Rococo Paintings, architecture and authentic clothes of the period. Numerous paintings of Boucher, Fragonard, Lancret, Drouais, Marie Antoinette portraits of Louise-Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun include flower motives as a composition part, as well as a fashion attribute. Madame de Pompadour is frequently portrayed with live flowers pinned to her toilets. Different floral motives majored in textile prints, embroideries, hairstyle accessories of the period… also many flower elements appear in unity with “rocaille” architectural decorations. All these gave me a strong feeling of romantic, playful blossom. Choosing rococo elements for my collection, I decided to make a tea rose in flower combination as a major motive of my designs. My intention was also to interpret the “flowerish” atmosphere of Rococo women’s toilet into up to date fashion.”

What kind of inspirations can we get from Mozart’s style for our lifestyle today?

Kirsten Hiller: “Milos Forman’s film “Amadeus” left a deep impression on me. His costumes don’t come across as being so opulent, as is the case in way too many costume flicks, where it always seems that princes and baronesses have just slipped into a brand-new costume without wrinkle and blemish. In Forman’s movie Mozart’s clothing looks like it’s been worn, but still looks good, comes across as being urban in the sense of that time: elegant, but not dressed to kill; sexy, but not overdone; playful and not at all stuffy. The fun Mozart had in his line of work also reflected his lifestyle. It was not main stream, and this attitude may have seemed very provocative to certain people. With a similar attitude of “seemingly unintentional provocative ness” you can also count on attracting quite a bit of attention in our day and time.”

Paz Soto Salinas: “The zest for life he showed, even during hardship, is perhaps the most inspiring about him. In terms of fashion he was a child of his times and mingling with nobles, he had to dress as extravagantly as they did. It is often refreshing to be more playful, trying to be over the top in a harmless way.”

What is your association with the person Mozart?

Tatiana Pogrebnyak: “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart …musician, composer … in one word, - a genius. For me, Mozart is associated with everlasting classics. The first association is music, gorgeous music; may be Requiem, for it is my favourite composer’s creation, very emotional and strong, whenever you listen to it. Due to the Triumph Fashion Award 2006 context, Mozart as a person was associated to me as a leading society personality, an artist of his field, less as a visual inspiration, but more as spiritual one. Mozart’s creations, especially those, inspired by Baroque musicians, reveal the Rococo playful atmosphere, on the other hand Mozart as a leading personality inspired me to think what Madame de Pompadour would choose to wear for her date.”

What was your motivation to participate in the Triumph International Fashion Award?

Paz Soto Salinas: “I always try to stay informed on fashion either via magazines or via internet. It really caught my interest, when I read about the Triumph Fashion Award last year, but it was already too late to participate. Gladly I could make it this time, especially since I enjoy this year’s theme very much. As I am only returning to fashion design I consider this an interesting experience and a great opportunity.”

Kirsten Hiller: “My friend Ann-Christine Wriedt from ESMOD brought my attention to this contest. Quickly I became enthused about the requirements and tasks which needed to be fulfilled. To unite sexy lingerie with outer garments and combine those with the themes Rock and Mozart presented a very attractive challenge for me. Besides that my final collection at ESMOD also involved integrating lingerie. However, in this case it meant combining glamorous evening wear with turn of the century (19th-20th) Western wear - a world I’m familiar with. I can very well imagine that some time in the near future this kind of conglomeration will be used by a wide range of designers and that it will be welcomed by the majority of their clientele.”

How would you describe your design concept? What was your first thought about the requirement “lingerie as an integral part of clothes”.

Tatiana Pogrebnyak: “My first thought for “lingerie as integral part of clothes” was, - visible part of clothes, still a part and not a solo fashion piece. It is nice to see fashion magazines with lingerie styling for an outerwear, and I like it. But not many would be able to show the street their underwear as it is. So the next thought was how I am going to combine the lingerie, which is visible, but already not underwear. I decided for lingerie as a “built-in” part of the garment to be my concept. The lingerie is as integrated into the garment silhouette, as it was designed this way from the beginning. The design itself is inspired by the underwear mood. Fabrics and materials should be matched exactly to the bra, so that it would merge and turn into a garment part. Panties take their part to complete the upper layer design and create a total look.”

Paz Soto Salinas: “The basic concept was trying to design something that not only would reveal the lingerie, but looked like an entity, like lingerie and clothes were designed at the same time, belonging together. Although it turned out to be more difficult than I thought, I believe to have managed pretty well. In my first designs I tried out different fabrics of varied colors, but then decided for what had been used for the lingerie, perhaps incorporating one additional fabric. With too many colors and textures, and other details the lingerie would lose exposure.”

Kirsten Hiller: “When I got the news about the theme of the Triumph fashion contest I was really excited! The theme was perfect! First of all, I have always loved Mozart. I studied music and played the clarinet before I started studying fashion design. Mozart was a true genius and he still had a great sense of humor. Secondly, for my final collection for school I also used the theme “underwear on the outside”. Thirdly, adding the theme “rock” gave it a great edge. So I started doing research by looking through fashion history books, rock magazines, and fashion trend web pages. I must have made at least 50 sketches before I decided which three I would choose to enter in the contest. I wanted to have a good mix between Rococo and Rock that you could wear on a night on the town and all that with a playful touch; sexy but innocent. I had a lot of fun with this contest, and I give my respect to Fashionoffice.org and Triumph for organizing such a wonderful contest.”

What’s the greatest difference between the meaning of fashion in our days and at Mozart’s time?

Tatiana Pogrebnyak: “The greatest difference between nowadays fashion and Mozart’s time fashion refers to its extension, purpose, volumes and its interchangeability. In the 18th century fashion was available to a very limited social class, mostly, to aristocratic society and rich merchants. The masses were wearing “previous fashion” or some basic clothes, suitable for hard and dirty work. So called “latest fashion” was spread at the court and hardly reached distant areas. Even province aristocracy was wearing old fashioned toilets. The purpose of Rococo fashion might be understood through wasteful lifestyle of the time, devoted to pleasures and amusements, flirt and love affairs. May be “Les Liaisons dangereuses” by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos reveal best the court atmosphere.

Women, dressed to kill, seductive and provocative, wearing deep décolleté dresses with satin bows and ribbons, decorating their toilets with lace and flowers, doing everything to attract male attention. Therefore through the race of embellishment, garments and hairstyle reached enormous dimensions, which limited any kind of activity. In comparison to Rococo, modern fashion is widely spread almost among all social classes. It differs from one society group to another, from region to region, but still it might be called fashion, represented by specific silhouette, shape, fabric, details, colour palette, etc. Modern fashion purpose goes into different directions: daywear, eveningwear, active wear, leisure wear and many others. Looking seductive or not depends on the wearer. Fashion volumes in comparison with Rococo are brought to minimum, except for haute couture fashion. An interesting point to mention is super fast fashion interchangeability in our days, changing every season, and providing the potential client with numerous different fashion pieces, while the Rococo fashion period lasted for several decades and “new fashions” brought only slight changes to the silhouette, being different in the amount of decorations.”

What will be the function of fashion in the future?

Paz Soto Salinas: “Fashion already is more important as ever and it will have even more influence in the future. It’s already impossible to sell a product without the right design and marketing strategy, no matter how good it is. Lifestyle or fashion magazines and TV programs will pop up from everywhere. They already are floating the market. Men, as consumers, will gain more and more importance. Trend, style, design, fashion - however you call it, it all points in the same direction. They will overlap stronger in the future.”

Kirsten Hiller: “In comparison to the nineties, where fashion seemed quite stale, you can sense a trend towards self composition and a love for more individual details nowadays. Each and everyone turn into his own hero, or already have. This is a trend which will surely last into the near future and beyond.”