Interview

Rosemarie Abela (Fashion Designer)

My interview was with Rosemarie Abela, who is a contemporary fashion designer. Her favourite style is the 1950's, where all romance and elegance were still new and real. The most things she likes about the 50's is the long and flow skirts and its headbands which to her are "just an extra touch". (Rosemarie Abela, 2016) she designs for fashionistas, whom are passionate about style and she is always happy with customers final look.  

She also adores the contemporary modern style especially the geometric shapes such as rectangles, squares, triangles, etc. therefore these elements are what makes the design clean and modern. She implies that mixing both styles will emerge a contemporary version out of them.

When asked from where she gets inspired, she answered that she gets inspired basically from everything. But sometimes she gets inspired from historic eras, fashionistas and also the Maltese history.

Alexander Mc Queen was also a great influence to her, with his Avant-garde designs. In fact his fashion shows are what made Abela interested and encouraged in fashion design. There is also Elie Saab with Avant-garde designs that inspired her.

Since she mentioned the term Avant-garde, I’ve made my research about the term and got an idea what was it. The term Avant-garde is originally French which refers to new ideas and techniques to any sector in design. It is also known to be referred to as something new. At that time manufactured Avant-garde products were quite a few, but the style had made an important impact on the 20^th century designs. Therefore it made an important impact on fashion design.

Then I looked up Alexander McQueen’s designs to refresh my memory about his designs. McQueen is a well Known fashion designer and was recognized to be one of the top. He was an avant-garde designer, who explored and worked with vast variety of materials. His designs, shows emotional power, raw energy, fragility & strength, modern fluidity and severity.

These were all results of the 20^th century improvements of design and the important improvements that certain designers and style took, lead us to what we have today. 

Rosemarie Abela's passion is creating her own knitwear material from yarn. Not only her material but she likes the leather and Neoprene materials. As soon as she made use of the neoprene materials she immediately liked it and became one of her top, which is to be used for contemporary design look. There are also organza and Brocade materials that are of her favourites.

The design process starts by researching, which approximately takes one month, then she creates a number of mood boards to help her come up with designs. then she starts by creating a silhouette and a colour palette, and then she starts off designing the collection/dresses, by having them done based on the mood-boards she just made. After the designing process she starts making the dresses with "attention to detail" and also good quality, which to her is very important.  

The following images are her designs

As one observes her designs, one will immediately notice the influences, she got from the designers mentioned and the mix of styles which results to actually comes up with a new mix of contemporary design. One can also notice how designers will be influenced from the past and how important is for us to look and understand what happened during the past, this would allow designers come up with good designs.

References:

Visual arts, n.d. Avant-Garde Art. [online] Available at: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/definitions/avant-garde-art.htm [Accessed 1 June2016].

Alexander Mc Queen Trading Limited, n.d. Biography [online] Available at: http://www.alexandermcqueen.com/experience/en/biography/ [Accessed 1 June 2016]. 

Fiell C. and Fiell P., 2015. Design of the 20th Century. Köln: Taschen.