For a while now I am following the work of this two young designers:
Vjeko Franetović and Nikica Ivančević and their, now well established brand
eNVy room. However first time I wrote about them was fairly recently when I
introduced photos from one of their campaign shoots.
What I like the most about
this brand is their business sense, strong focus on their core product and the
fact that they are personally so in-touch with their customer via all of their
communication channels from column, website to live communication on Facebook
and Twitter.
I definitely agree with the well
known fact that dress is the best one piece outfit which almost always makes us
look elegant and well put together. So eNVy room's focus product is very well
on point ;) Here comes the interview...
Is there a fashion brand or an individual designer who you admire in
creative or in a business sense?
We cannot differentiate one specific person, but we definitely follow
and observe what is going on in the industry overall locally and
internationally.
Who is an average eNVy Room
customer? What is the price range of your pieces and what are the best selling
ones?
Our basic product is the dress.
Primarily evening dress and wedding dress, so our average customer is the women
seeking such dress for a special
occasion, mostly weddings and prom dresses, while for example in Wien the
demand for such dress is much higher.
There are three main price ranges: short dresses ( 2,000 to
4,000 HRK), long dresses (4500 – 6500 HRK) and wedding dresses for which price
ranges corespond to long and short dresses accordingly with most expensive
pieces ranging up to 1,000 Euros.
Which
other companies outside of the fashion industry did you cooperate with?
Last year, we have colaborated with the biggest Croatian
consumer goods store Konzum and the Libresse. Product design has always been
our area of interest, we really enjoy doing it.
Do you
think that designer needs to have formal education in order to be successful in
his work? Does fashion designer need to
be talented or rather a good business person to succeed?
Formal education cannot harm, it is desirable actually, but it's
definitely not a guarantee for success. In order to be successful in todays
economy it isn't enough just to be creative and talented, one must also have a
good business knowledge.
You
two are one of the rare Croatian designers who seem to have well developed PR
strategy: blog, Facebook, Twitter, column, website etc. Are you administering these pages on your
own or do you use an agency? How important is such close communication with
consumer for development of your brand?
We don’t
have an official administrator person, it is mostly us personally who communicate
via these channels. We definitely follow and believe in current and future role
of the internet as our brands communication channel. It has definitely positively impacted our
brand.
As many other Croatian designers you have started to
collaborate with Croatian fashion bloggers. What is your opinion on Croatian fashion
blogger scene? Do you find Croatian fashion bloggers media wise to much publicized
based on their fashion knowledge and blog readership?
We have to
admit that we are not that familiar with the readership of Croatian fashion
blogs, so we cannot comment this part and compare it with media coverage they
are getting. For us fashion bloggers are
still interesting subject, as we wrote about it in our last column.
Naturally,
from marketing and advertising side, they should be treated as any other media,
for us they are just another channel of communication toward a potential
customer.
What
is your overal opinion on the Croatian women styling and on the current
situation in the Croatian fashion scene and existing polarization among local
fashion events? Do we really need that many fashion weeks?
This is one of the topics we wrote about
in our column. We don’t see it as being black or white. While there are
designers willing to show their collections, interested guests and media who
eager to watch these shows, while we all successfully do our jobs, why not?
Competition is a good thing. Production wise, we believe that Fashion.hr event
can be compared with some of the international fashion events.
Do
you find Croatian designer prices in general to be a bit to high? Why is that
so?
It
depends, in comparison to an average salary in Croatia, yes, they are
definitely to high. However, the costs of the local production are rather high (machies,
fabrics,rent, utilities and staff), so with that taken into account, the final
price is not that high anymore. However, both of these sides need to be
observed from local market point of view and its reality.
Where
do you produce your garments, what are the avrage quantities and do you insist
on local production?
All
of our production is mostly independant, local in limited, smaller series.
Did
you ever noticed someone copying your designs? If so, what did you do about it?
Do you believe that current local legislation protects your design as your
intelectual property?
We are not one of the paranoid ones who would create a noise about every
similarity we notice, and we don’t think we have patented things like draping
or bondage dress. However, there were the cases, absolutely, some that flatter,
while other which clearly went too far with copying.
There was only once that we have
proactively reacted, when one young designer from Rijeka has in detailed copied
one of our dresses and presented it in media as her own collection design.
Local legislation doesn't provide sufficient
protection so the public humiliation is the highest penalty one can get in
Croatia in such case.
What
is your stand on collaborations of high-end fashion designers with mass market
retail clothing chains like Versace & H&M, Alduk & Amadeus. Do you
think this cheapens designers main line? Why would someone buy more expensive
piece from Versace's runway collection when one can get the similar piece 4x
cheaper in H&M?
Such collaboration certainly makes
fashion more available to general public. We fully support it.
Your
collections can be purchased on 4 locations in Croatia and one internationally
in Wiena. How hard it is for Croatian designer to expend to international
market?
The main goal of each
Croatian fashion brand should be the placement of their product to the local
market first. If local market in Croatia could ensure well functioning business
environment and placement to international markets, it would be much easier for
us. This way it is rather hard. With Croatia entering the EU next year, there
will be no import fees which will help us to be cheaper and thus more competitive
on EU markets.
What are your future brand development plans?
We are working on showing
new collection on the next Fashion.hr event as well as on launching T-shirts
with fashion illustrations.
Given the current negative local
and global economic trends, our plan is to maintain current business activity.
While as a response to the economic crises, in the near future we plan to respond with launching the lower price tier
collection.
In some of the previous
posts I have wrote about animal print or shape inspired fashion pieces and
accessories like the fabulous catty
sunglasses and optical frames on top of this post I wrote one about animal
world inspired couture editorials and styling.
For this post I was inspired by my favorite of
animal prints: leopard print. Leopard print has remained trendy for numerous
seasons now transferring from runway to streets and back and it doesn't seem to be going
anywhere anytime soon. My favorite
leopard print pieces which I own are silk scarf, cashmere sweater, ballet flats
and silk shirt. I am also looking to get an envelope clutch, not all to be worn
at once naturally. :)
For me these pieces are a great stand out
piece when I am putting together casual business styling and I love to wear
leopard print with neutrals like black, white and beige with red lipstick as
another pop of color.
How do you wear your animal
print darlings?
“Women and cats will do as they please,
and men and dogs should relax and get
used to the idea.”
Robert A. Heinlein
When I still lived in NYC,
Free People store was one of those I visited on a regular, if nothing else at
least to window shop and get styling inspirations. Pieces I find myself buying
most often are turquoise silver jewelry, vegan leather pants, shorts, dresses
and jackets as well as tights and leggings, thermal shirts and maxi cotton
dresses. Last time I checked out the page there were also a couple of cute
pairs of shoes.
Since some of the top 10
fashion brands which I adore (i.e. Rugby RL) do not deliver to Croatia yet
(unless I ask some of my friends who still work there to buy it and ship it to
me) I was thrilled to find out that Free People actually do! The shipping cost
is not bad at all, especially if you order more pieces at a time.
Here are some of my favorite
pieces and looks.
I would totally recommend to
every city girl to check out Free People collections, cause at first I thought
of the brand as being a bit to hippy for my personal taste but after buying
couple of little things I kept coming back.
Although my personal style
is somewhere in between Audrey Hepburn and rocker-chic, or to be quite honest
totally bipolar at times, I tend to find bunch of fashion forward pieces of a
good quality, quite comfortable and fairly priced here.
While many things I buy when
discounted mostly due to cost of shipping and most of the times they do have my
size left at seasons end.
January collection video:
All photos and a video are property of Free People.
Since I am quite tall (six-two) and my boyfriend is also very tall I have a compassion and emotional reason why I have investigated, experienced and put together what I learned about where to find, how and where to look for and how to go about finding appropriate and right fitting clothing for tall men (meaning: above six feet tall).
Challenges most tall man
experience are finding pants that are not too short, shirts which are not too
tight or too short in the waist, shoes of appropriate size as well as the right size dress
clothing... in order not to keep walking around in sportswear all of the time.
Most common mistake tall man
do is that they just buy the biggest sizes of everything and don’t try stuff on in the store before buying them.
So, here are some of the
things I have learned:
1. Have confidence in your look.
Being tall is gorgeous and
attractive. Statistics show that tall people have better chances of getting a job then the shorter people, they are better
paid and girls prefer tall man as they look more protective and stronger J So, accept the fact that you are tall, be confident,
don’t slouch, stand proud and tall and put some effort into your look and into choice of your clothing.
2. Custom order key pieces.
By key pieces I mean basics
in your closet which never go out of style. These are investment pieces in
which you should invest some money in and which you can wear many, many times
so they will definitely pay themselves of if we look at the price per wear
ratio.
Put some time into finding a
good tailor who will measure you and custom make your key pieces according to
your body size and type. This way you will get some key pieces you can always turn to like:
- Black wool suite for winter
- Black silk or satin suite for
summer
- White & black dress
shirts
- Black woolen winter coat
3. Don’t go over the top.
Ok, so, you are tall. You WILL get noticed, so don’t go over the top with mixing too many colors and prints. If you are wearing a suite, don’t be afraid of wearing a more fitted, solid color dark one and choose an interesting tie as a trendy detail.
4. Know tall people friendly casual wear brands
(and remember or write down your size in each brand as these my vary)
(and remember or write down your size in each brand as these my vary)
According to my boyfriends experience
and my research, bellow are some of the brands that have appropriate sizes of jeans, t-shirts and sweaters for tall muscular and long and
lanky built men :
- JeansShop in NY– jeans
- John Varvatos – pants, shirts, suites, shoes
- Ralph Lauren – shirts, pants, belts
- G-star Raw / G-star on Asos.com – T-shirts, jeans and sweaters
- Diesel – jeans
- Mustang - jeans
- Review – jackets, scarves
- Converse – t-shirts
- True Religion
- JeansShop in NY– jeans
- John Varvatos – pants, shirts, suites, shoes
- Ralph Lauren – shirts, pants, belts
- G-star Raw / G-star on Asos.com – T-shirts, jeans and sweaters
- Diesel – jeans
- Mustang - jeans
- Review – jackets, scarves
- Converse – t-shirts
- True Religion
5. Invest in
comfortable shoes.
It is so very important to choose a comfortable, right size shoes if you are tall. Especially if you are an athlete and you workout every single day and carry some old injuries around – in this case choice of the footwear is crucial!
Here are some multi brand sites holding cool shoes of big sizes.
- Big Shoes
- Oddball
- Bigman
- Mr. Porter
- Large Feet
- Big Shoes
- Oddball
- Bigman
- Mr. Porter
- Large Feet
“So long and lanky, my suit it should thank me.”
Jay Z
Since I got a small pink
Fuji film camera for Christmas from my boyfriend to always wear in my purse, I
took the opportunity to try it out during our afternoon walk around Madrid. I am totally in love with this small but
mighty camera! I don’t have to be careful and look after my big pro camera
every single minute cause this one actually fits in every single purse I have J
We used the sunny afternoon
to visit some of the Madrid’s best vintage stores and shops like: El Corte
Ingles, vintage stores like Lotta, Holala and Templo de Susu where I got the
amazing purse, vintage frames and a sweater which you can see bellow on my
boyfriend and on its own. We also had some great Rose wine, bought some sexy
shower curtains and had some delicious food.
Kisses from Madrid!
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