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Data inscrierii: 28/Iun/2014
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 Trimis: 21/06/2015 12:35 Titlul subiectului: Meet A Détacher Designer Mona Kowalska |
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Mona Kowalska, the designer behind New York-based label A Détacher is not your typical fashion designer. The Polish-born, Baltimore-raised Kowalska’s unorthodox road to fashion is evident in her signature silhouettes, breezy dresses and luxurious separates, the kind of fashion that heeds the description of “thinking woman’s fashion,” but really means, “women dressing for themselves.”
Kowalska studied Political Science in Chicago “partly to please my parents,” she said in a talk last night at the Museum of Art & Design, third in a series aptly titled “Designing Women.” But before she could finish her degree, she up and moved to Italy to study fashion design, which seems like a strange shift in gears, but when taking into consideration the kinds of clothes she makes, her Political Science background makes perfect sense. It also makes more sense after learning that back in Poland, her mom used to be the head of the atelier at one of the factories, “there would alway be wives of communists having fittings at the house,” she said. “Wives of communists,” seems to perfectly echo the kinds of clothes that she makes, if we poză these women as being incredibly well educated, and sophisticated, which they most likely were.
“I don’t know that when I went to study I had the sense of (an aesthetic),” she told Yahoo Style after her talk, “it was much more about like ‘I’m going to Italy! I’m going to have this other life and I’m going to study this.” After finishing her studies in Italy she lived in Paris for a year as head of the atelier at Sonia Rykiel but found that corporate life was not for her. “It was hard for me to see why (so many) meetings were necessary,” she said laughing. After a year, she packed up, moved to New York, and got ready to open her own label and store, which she accomplished a year after that.
“Once I started with my company, after working with other people, there was a period of ridding (myself) of other people’s ideas, and figuring out what really interests me.” In the beginning, this meant crafting intricate patterns and focusing on the structure of the pieces she was creating, but as she got more comfortable, and began participating during fashion week, her expression broadened. “When we started doing the shows, (the collections) became about more complex things,” Kowalska explained, “I collaborated with people, and if I talk about music (for the show) it helps of there is a big overarching idea (for the collection), so it made me flesh out everything.”
Her work is more conceptual than most of her peers, although in this case “conceptual” doesn’t refer to “unwearable.” Usually the conversation about whether or not “fashion is art,” revolves around couture, the heavily embroidered/bejeweled/constructed, the pieces that belong in museums, and not on our bodies while we take the train, but Kowalska’s approach can only be described as that of an artist, although she does not see it that way. “I don’t necessarily think of fashion as art,” she revealed, “but I think it’s a really big, rich topic, because it involves history, craft, sociology, psychology, economics. It’s big anyway, we don’t need to add anything else.” |
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