INSPIRED BY… LOVAS

Lovas Spring 2011

After meeting Wesley Badanjak’s lovely mother on a warm August evening (we went to the wrong address, sorry Mom Badanjak!), we found ourselves in a Mississauga studio that houses David Dixon, as well as Badanjak’s label Lovas, staring at the periodic table of elements. “This was the first inspiration, I have a degree in bio chemistry,” states Badanjak, when asked about his upcoming Spring 2011 line, which he is showing at LG Fashion Week today. I went through the first 30, 35 elements and I was looking at the colours of every element. I thought this is an interesting idea—blacks and silvers and greys, mixed with a bright green, and bright pink. I thought ok, I’ll call the collection Elemental. And then the word itself started to inspire me I thought, what elements make up a woman’s wardrobe?”

Playing with staples that fit into a women’s wardrobe also helped drive the Lovas Spring 2011 collection. “I thought, well no one wants just a boring staple,” laughs Badanjak. “So, how am I going to take this staple, make it still look very wearable, but still do something to it?” That something comes with help from the fabrics, some of which were imported from India and Italy, with painted sequins coming from Belgium and leather sequins and chiffon from Spain.

Gathering ideas from multiple sources is the way most designers work, especially Badnajak, whether it’s music, family, or heritage.

[Make sure to check out lgfashionweek.ca for a livestream of LOVAS, today at 5pm.]

FRM: Besides the periodic table of elements, what were some of your other inspirations for this season?
WB: These are what I have been listening to non-stop…[showing CD’s] Scissor Sisters, I love Dragonette, Kelis’ new album is the best CD that I have bought in three years. It’s only 9 songs, but every song is phenomenal, you just want to get in your car and start dancing. It sounds nothing like her.

FRM: What is it about these artists that drive you?
WB: Its happy music, it’s positive. Last season the inspiration was my grandmother, and her life was a very difficult life, it was a sad life and she died tragically. The whole time working on it there was so much black. Looking at old the pictures of her and thinking about her, it was kind of depressing after a while. This season it was like, ok let’s shrug that off. It was a great season, I loved last season, but lets switch it up a bit, make it happier, make it more about who my core customer is, a 25-45 year old woman who’s young, who is fun, she takes care of her self, she looks great. I wanted to focus on that, make something interesting, and have fun with the clothes. I think sometimes people take fashion a little bit too seriously.

FRM: Do you come from a very creative family?
WB: Yes, well, my parents are creative people, but they were immigrants and when they came here it wasn’t, please sign up for a creative job. My mom was a chef back home in Croatia, and my dad was a sample maker for shoes, so he did patterns and sewing and concepts for one of the biggest shoe manufactures in the former Yugoslavia at the time. And they would produce shoes for Bata, for Puma—in Europe they were very well known. The company had a thousand employees, it was that big. And so, when they came to Canada, it was like Ok, you work construction and you work in a factory, cause that’s what you can do without English. But it was the ’70s, it was different. My cousin, she’s a makeup artist, my brother a photographer. 

FRM: And your older brother shoots for you?

WB: Yeah the photos are him, and we collaborate on all the concepts. He’s really good.

FRM: Are there other designers that you try to emulate business wise?
WB: Business-wise, in Canada it’s Lida Baday, and in America its Michael Kors. They are great for what they are, and some people aren’t going to like my stuff, but we all have our own opinions. What I like about them, is that you look at a Lida Baday dress, you know it’s a Lida Baday, and like with Michael Kors, you know it’s Michael Kors. The quality is there in the product, the fit, everything is there, and they are successful because they really figured out their business model properly. They know who they sell to, they know their price points, they know their fabrics, they know their quality, and they deliver season after season.

FRM: And whose design talent do you admire right now?
WB: When it comes to styling and design, I love Gaultier, I’ve always loved Gaultier because he does draw that line of super avant garde, but wearable. I love Proenza Schouler. I think their stuff is beyond amazing. I love and respect Nicolas Ghesquière just because I don’t understand how he thinks. Like some of the stuff he has is just like really where does that come from? Mind you, you have a team of 50 people working for you, too so it’s a bit different. Who else…Of course Alexander McQueen. I think we all have a soft spot for him. I love what Sarah Burton is doing though. She took him and added a woman’s perspective to it. And it’s really a minute thing, but it really turned it from super, avant-garde only art-wear, into wearable art, which is nice to see. And it’s sad that he’s gone and who knows where the label will go in the future. And I love what Riccardo Tisci is doing at Givenchy—beyond phenomenal. Like that last couture collection was disgusting. When you look at detail shots, you’re just like, ‘you’re kidding me!’ Insane…

FRM: As a designer, you are obviously drawn to the details. Does it amaze you what the major fashion houses can do?
WB: A pant is a pant is a pant, right? You can drop the crotch, you can make them high waisted, you can make them wide, make them skinny, but it’s still a pant—it’s got two legs and a zipper and a button. So what is going to make it interesting? Yes it’s the fabric, sometimes the cut, and embellishment, things like that. In evening wear its even worse, because when a woman buys a dress, she’s spending $3,000 on a dress, she wants to see a beautiful dress. Tisci was working with mermaids, strapless, cap sleeves—all very basic shapes. But when you look at the layers of appliquéd lace, the beads, the tassels, and the way things were draped… Because I do it on a day-to-day basis, I can tell how long it would have taken to do, and how intricate everything is. And you can’t compare it, you can’t get that work done here, you can only get it in Europe, where you have these 60 year old women, who have been doing this since the age of 20.

FRM: It’s sad they are a dying breed.
WB: Yes, Chanel bought out all the houses. The feather people, the people who do the embroidery and the flowers and also a couture shoe house. There were a bunch of these ateliers’ in Paris, that were doing all the couture house work, they bought them out. I found this out that House of Lesage, which does embroidery, actually started a school. They take the kids from fashion school who want to focus on embroidery and its a four year program and you see them working on these looms and they are embroidering and learning how to do everything the old way. In 30 to 40 years this isn’t going to exist any more.

FRM: To keep fashion going and moving forward, fashion needs people who are that detailed. Will it all come down to a machine? Machines are great, they can do great stuff, but a lot of stuff they just can’t.
WB: Some stuff they can’t. Last season when I did all that grommet work, that was all done by hand, because a machine can’t do that. We had to do every single one by hand. In our industry, especially to sew a seam, you have to do it by hand. There aint no machine that’s going to sew a garment for you! Things like embroidery and beading, those things are dying off. Personally, I always try to put a little in my collections too, and I also try to incorporate a little traditional Croatian embroidery, because it’s dying off back home. A lot of these older women are like ‘the young girls are so uninterested in this, when we’re gone, who’s going to be able to do this?’ Because its all done by hand, so by keeping all these traditional embroideries in my collections, I’m hoping, once I get the volume and the sales, I can start doing things there, and build a little bit of business in these small villages where these women are doing this stuff.