Vanessa Emirian’s graduate collection Circulate is hard to forget. Featured as one of 12 designers in the National Graduate Runway at VAMFF in March this year, Circulate puts us in a wacky, playful mood where spotty possibilities are endless. With an emphasis on traditional, artisan hand-made techniques, the collection incorporates an impressive array of needle felted patterns, weaving and bonding. We spoke to Vanessa to understand how she imagines her evident talent will translate into future collections.
Where are you currently located? We noticed a few Instagram pictures in Prague.
I live and work in Sydney at the moment. I visited Europe earlier in the year and visited Prague on that holiday. It was sensational.
We loved your graduate collection that featured at VAMFF. How did you enjoy the process of be involved?
That was a competition which I’d entered to be apart of at the end of last year with the opportunity to show the collection as part of the National Graduate Showcase. There were 12 finalists and it was just such just a surreal process and such an amazing night because there was such a great team of really professional and experienced people working on the production. There was such a diverse range of innovative and creative collections so it was really just a privilege to be selected for that kind of show in that context.
You also won a grant for $10,000 from the NSW business chamber earlier this year. That must of be great in terms of expanding too.
Yeah it was pretty awesome. We were asked to enter this competition and to create a business plan that involved a new innovative fashion-related product. It involves a cash prize and mentor-ship from the Chamber which gave me access to things that designers sometimes really need help with like financial planning or legal advice or ‘where do I get this fabric from?’ and how to organise my business, you know?
You speak of using traditional artisan techniques in your design. Do you plan to continue to explore this notion or will you incorporate some pieces that are a little less labor intensive?
Well actually what’s exciting is, at the moment I’m working on a ready-to-wear collection out of Circulate. The Circulate collection has a lot of pieces with internal structures which make them quite complicated to wear, so in that sense they’re more of a conceptual outcome. The small range of ready to wear pieces will continue with that polka dot, wacky theme. They will incorporate similar techniques and be reminiscent of that same mood and feeling which I always go for – that playful femininity. Moving forward whenever I make a collection it’s always coming back to the focus of taking something that is all about a value process using traditional artisan techniques, celebrating them and there’s the sense of the handmade with beautiful touches to the garment, which is really important to me.
When will it be available?
I’m about to take the collection to the Origin Passion and Beliefs Trade Show in Italy so hope to have samples of the ready to wear collection then. I’ll begin selling it in June.
Credits
Text Savannah Anand-Sobti
Photography Lucas Dawson