After snatching a copy of N WIND magazine at 5/5/Junior Conference I finally had the time to read it on my morning commute to uni. And oh my, am I happy I had managed to fit it into my suitcase back to London for I came across an amaaaaazing Estonian designer Marit Ilison!
I found myself completely compelled by her new collection, called "Longing for Sleep". What a beautiful and nostalgic name, isn't it?
"The conceptual collection is about the haunting wish to sleep during dark wintery times, kaamos. "Kaamos" is an untranslatable word only known in Estonian and Finnish languages, referring to the period in the Northern Hemisphere when the days are very short and it barely gets light outside. To materialize the feeling of a wish to stay in bed wrapped in a blanket all day long, Marit Ilson has created a collection using vintage Soviet wool blankets." (Aušra Prasauskaitė, 2016)
The thing that I absolutely admire is how she embraced Estonian history of Soviet occupation and managed to transform it into such beautiful objects. There's no point in denying the painful past, so why not turn it into something beautiful? As the designer said herself, "I often see traces of conflicts and nostalgia in my work and I find myself working with things I'm irritated by. I see it as a challenge to reform the irritation into something pleasant. To see a good potential in everything and mold the irritator into a form I can accept it in."
And it's not everything! Inside the coats lie beautiful embellishments. The reason for placing them here is based on the sense of guiltiness when all you want to do is say in a warm bed and daydream about all of the wonderful things that are going to happen to you but at the same time but feel obliged get up and start working. In Ilison's words, it's like a "the crying baby in Chekhov's novel or a grain of sand in your sheets, or a pea under the matress that doesn't allow you to fully fall into slumber." That's the reason behind it; on one side it refers to "our beautiful dreamlands" placed deeply inside every each of us, but on the other side, to the pricking voice, telling us to get up and get to work.
Sources:
http://pupulandia.fi/2016/03/02/koko-paiva-viltin-uumenissa/
http://www.vogue.it/en/talents/new-talents/2014/04/marit-ilison
N WIND Magazine 2016 April - May
