LECTURE: Spirk at VCU-Q.
For Milan-based fashion designer Kristina Spirk, the contemporary inevitabilities of fast, mass and disposable consumption fades in the face of finding a way “towards a more sustainable and holistic reality”.
Spirk was down in Doha to present a fascinating lecture ‘Rethinking Design: A luxury metadesign brand’ at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCU-Q) Atrium on Wednesday evening. Spirk’s lecture was part of VCU-Q’s annual Crossing Boundaries Lecture Series, which reflects the cross-disciplinary nature of the featured speakers with lectures by the likes of Nimah Ismail Nawwab, Adélia Borges, and Jennifer Kabat, on contemporary and challenging subjects.
Through her work and philosophy, Spirk, who specialises in luxury womenswear, explores the limits of what design should be. In her lecture, Spirk focused on the metadesign approach, and whether design can be re-directed through it. In her opinion, the ultimate aim of metadesign is to bring about a “synergy-oriented” society to replace the existing “product-oriented” world of consumption.
Spirk’s Decontoured is the first luxury fashion label that functions as a metadesigner and provides a bespoke service for redesigning existing garments that have exceptional, symbolic value for their owners, but need to be given a new life.
When asked what made her come up with her concept that’s based on metadesign and reinventing the existing in the first place, Spirk told Community, “I woke up on my 30th birthday and reflected about my life. I took a good look around me. I didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t like fashion anymore and what it represented. I didn’t feel that I was contributing as a designer for higher good and I didn’t like this world defined with the concept of the mass, fast and disposable consumption. I realised that we don’t need new stuff but meaningful experiences and a more holistic approach to design. So I decided to try and make a change.”
And change she made. Her fashion label “decontours garments”, which means it preserves their heritage while giving them a contemporary design and shape. Decontoured’s bespoke service offers a collaborative experience that invites clients to become co-creators in the design process, “so that garments, once created, reflect perfectly both your physical contours and personality.”
Spirk explains, “The most challenging part about refashioning the old is working with clients and having them embrace this new experience that also makes them step outside their comfort zone and share their personal stories.”
Metadesign is the core philosophy of her second label, Decontoured. Spirk combines her vision with a metadesign approach that seeks to elevate design to a new level by creating a value that transcends seasonal fashion trends. Aesthetic sustainability is the foundation of Decontoured, making it a concept for alternative luxury.
“Every garment, picture and pixel represents my vision of fashion developed over 13 years in the industry, and underlines my desire to introduce design that is both memorable and meaningful,” Spirk says.
Spirk established herself in the emerging Croatian fashion market after graduating as a fashion designer from the Profokus Academy of Fashion Design in Zagreb in 2003. Her restless spirit encouraged her to leave her hometown of Zagreb and pursue both personal and professional growth, first in New York in 2010, and then in Milan in 2012.
Now her emphasis lies on finding a constructive mode of design, rather than a new model of design. Metadesign seeks to better anticipate unforeseen changes with an eye towards adaptation.
Since she believes behind every great design, there is an even greater story, she happens to have amassed an assortment of interesting stories over the years. “Every garment that I redesigned is a unique experience,” she says, when asked to recount an anecdote that she is particularly fond of, “I can’t single out a particular one but the one that had the strongest impact on me is related to the first garment that I redesigned almost 10 years ago, when I was still in Zagreb.”
Spirk was creating a wedding dress for one of her clients, when with barely two months left for the wedding, her client’s mother passed away.
“They decided to proceed with the wedding, and when she came to fit her dress, she brought her mother’s wedding dress with her, asking me if I could take the lace ornaments from it and put them on her dress,” Spirk recounts, “She was struggling to fill her mother’s physical absence. I suggested that we instead redesign her mother’s dress so that she can wear it as hers. She agreed and when we finished it, the wedding dress turned out amazingly well. She later told me that the dress gave her the strength to go through the ceremony and that she had a strong sense of her mother’s presence the whole time.”
“This was the moment when I realised the true power of a garment and I felt proud as a designer because I had managed to create something that wasn’t just beautiful and crafted, but also very meaningful,” Spirk says.
