Nini Goderidze is a fashion designer from Tbilisi. Her futuristic creations come from a technological view of life and fashion, filled with neon colors and particular textures.
She was glad to answer to some of our questions about her experience and collections.
Tell me about your work and how you created your brand, what inspired you to do so and what message do you want to express?
From the very childhood I have been interested in fashion. As a result I attended a four year BA of fashion design at Tbilisi State Academy of Arts. During my last year, before graduation, I started working on my brand. I decided to do so because fashion is the only way I can communicate with the world. Overall, I do not have the perception of time in my artworks: past, present and future of humankind are blended. My human beings have no gender, they are a mixture of human and cyborgs, natural and artificial at the same time.
I see you use a lot of strong and neon colors for your designs: is there a specific reason?
The colors I use in my designs are associated with the technological future. But as I already said, there is no specific time in anything in my opinion. For example, the green I use comes from the Victorian period. My green is the mix of the poisonous Victorian green and the neon lights of the future.
What are your favorite fabric and material?
The thing that doesn’t change over time is our skin. I produce the fabric myself, so I use silicone and latex to imitate human skin.
In my fabrics I create textures that look like scars, wrinkles and sometimes I add body details as ears, eyes or hair. The ears and eyes I use in my costumes are inspired by the Rainbow portrait of the Elisabeth I Queen of England. Ears and eyes on the costume of the woman emperor are there to show that there is nothing under her power that she doesn’t see or hear.
How do you use technology for your works and why so?
In my production, I use prosthetic silicone, special effects’ latex and 3D scanning and printing technologies for mold making. I use technologies in my designs as old fabrics alone are not sufficient to express the concept I try to communicate. For my lookbooks, I use digital editing to emphasize my own world and to make humans look like I imagine they would look in the future.
Which fashion/art icons do you look up to?
Actually, I don’t have an icon because I think the only person you should follow is yourself. However, I value designers that inspired me to do my own art.
Since my childhood, I was inspired by Alexander McQueen, Iris van Herpen and Rick Owens, or instagram influencer Salvjiia who looks as I imagine a future human could look like. This type of production motivates me a lot to create my own work.
Some of your designs might be referred to as non-sense, do you feel like it?
There are a lot of artists in the past who were not understood correctly because the vision of an artist is not always matching with the vision of society. Thus, I’m not surprised that some people have no reference to evaluate my work.
I believe that this is what we should expect from artists in the modern age.
What are your projects for the future? What would you like to explore more about?
For my future plans, I am working on an interesting concept that has been obsessing me lately. However, I understand that the best way of communicating it is through the fashion I design rather than the things I say. The only thing I can forecast is that its presentation might be even more technological.
Design Nini Goderidze
Styling David Apakidze
Photographer Nata Sopromadze
Digital Editing Anna Niniashvili
Mua Knutsie
Models Lasha Kabanashvili, Nick Grey, JiaC H
