Elise Kim Preview Amsterdam Fashion Week

Today we will start a new series of previews of fashion-collections as an appetizer for the coming Amsterdam Fashion Week. We will start with designer Elise Kim.

Of course we will write and post our review after the official show or presentation plus photos of the complete collection. We’ll keep you posted!

Elise Kim will show her fall/winter 2012/2013 collection on Thursday 26 January at 06.00 PM. She spoke with us about her brand new collection which is all about the moment we fall asleep…

Time
“The collection is already finished, so we can be quite relaxed. I always make sure I’m right on schedule with my work; I am a real planner. Besides, I got a little help too from one intern, and two seamstresses.”

Amsterdam Fashion Week
“This is going to be my third collection. I am very glad to be able to show my work during Amsterdam Fashion Week. If Grazia had not supported me I should have held a smaller show. I hope that through this show people will get to know my work better. I hope it will result in some extra publicity and maybe, just maybe, some extra sale points. Yet this won’t happen so easily, since my clothes are pretty expensive. In Paris, where I will go in March, I will probably do better.”

Inspiration
“Epiphenomenon is the theme of this collection. It’s the first part of a trilogy. I will show the second and third part in my upcoming collection. It’s all about the fragmentation of reality at the moment you’re starting to fall asleep. The collection will be an abstraction of the moment in which you loose sense of collateral things. You move into another dimension.”

Looks
“The theme of the collection is visible in every single one of the 30 looks. It will be translated through (pretty vague) music, the use of fabric and my choice of colors. For instance the order of the clothes will represent the phases from being awake to falling asleep; from dreamy and soft to tough and real.”

Colors
“Shades of blue, deep blue, black, nude and black again will represent the phase you go through from being awake to falling asleep as well. The nude stands for the moment right before you fall asleep and wake up just a little bit.”

Materials
“I used silk, cotton, leather and a special kind of wool, which doesn’t even look like it comes from sheep, cause it’s so long. New for me is the knitwear I used, for instance on a long knitted dress. I also created my very first own print at the Textielmuseum in Tilburg. It’s a kind of feather print, printed on white silk.”

Women
“I make clothes for women who know what they want and who stand for quality. I would love to see women like Carice van Houten or Anne Hatthaway wear my clothes, but then again I’m flattered by every single woman who puts on my designs.”

Photography: Jeannette Huisman@Team Peter Stigter