Interview with designer Marina Hörmanseder
Last week Warda Network contacted me to meet designer Marina Hoermanseder during her visit at the Austrian Post for her new project redesigning their uniforms and they even asked me to interview her for my blog, say whaaat?
Now, i don´t think there is need to tell you who she is, but just in case some of you still don´t know her, Marina Hoermanseder is an Austrian-born designer and the queen of leather corsets.
So this Monday she visited one of Vienna´s Post Offices to observe and gather ideas in order to redesign the new uniforms. I know little about uniforms myself, but that ain´t easy to do, very sure of it. We normally associate an uniform to ideas and types of people, so maybe that´s the most challenging part for a designer. What is your favorite kind of uniform by the way..beside pilots, of course..got you right there ;)
My favorite part of the event (besides wearing one of her pieces) was me interviewing designer Marina Hoermanseder, of course, because hello...what a pleasure!! Not only because i love her work, but also because she´s so super sweet! And believe me, i wouldn´t say that if it wasn´t true ;) Oh, and she´s one year younger than me. Say what?
So here our short interview:
me: Hi Marina, first of all, it is an honour to be here interviewing you. I´ve known your work for a while now and besides the beautiful aesthetics of your pieces i love how powerful women look in your designs.
1. How would you describe your style?
Marina H: Well, if someone does know my brand, i think the words that describe it best are leather art, avangarde, but always with a twist of prêt-à-porter, very feminine. Besides the molded leather and the leather straps and like these little fetish elements there are always some feminine details such as ruffles, pastel colors, it is never to harsh.
2. How did you decide to become a fashion designer?
Marina H.: Well actually i always wanted to, but then my parents said i had to learn something reasonable first, so after school i studied economics. Because this was the ulimate of my parents who said i had to do my master in international business before i was actually allowed to study fashion. So, after having completed the masters i went to ESMOD Berlin to finally be allowed and be able to study fashion. And then getting self employed was pretty much of a coincidence because i was lucky enough because my diploma collection had some good press and after that, while i was on holidays and i got this call from IMG, the guys who organise the Fashion Week and they said: “well, we support you for a show, are you in?”..and all i said was: “i have to call you back, because i have to cask my parents” (laughs)
So i asked my parents and they said: “ok, let´s try this”. This was 2 and a half years ago, when i built my first collection, in my appartment, with the help of my best friends, because i did not have any employees, any atellier, this was just not there. So yes, the first collection was made on my kitchen floor and now we are 20 people in a beautiful atellier in Berlin.
3. Your work is very well recieved nationally and internationally, congratulations! I know you´ve worked together with Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Austrian Airlines, Hello Kitty and now the Austrian Post, which actually brings us here. What are the goals in redesigning the uniform of the Austrian Post? How are you approaching this project?
Well the thing is we´re here today to exactly find these ideas, like to see what the people who work here actually want, like how much fashion do they want for the uniforms. Just now i heard that the uniform brings up some trust in the people, so i think you can not go too much into some super high fashion, super crazy kind of things because otherwise people quickly loose trust in you. So i think this is going to be a very important day to filter what is needed and what is actually possible to make it more cool, more stylish, more of a fashionable piece to wear than just a uniform. But i think i would definitely have some concepts in mind with trends like with our trends gows (scouts). So maybe it is going to be even a concept with some ethno theme , with some prints, there will be some patterns like graffic patterns. In the end, like it always is with uniforms, the concept that you make is a lot crazier and more fashionable than it will be in the end. So i would probably present something a very radical fashion, then something in between and something super low key, it we will probably meet somewhere in between the avangarde fashion designer and the truth worthy post uniform.
4. Thank you so much for this, just a last question before ending our interview, where can my readers find more of your work?
It depends on where you live, but in Austria we are in Vienna in Amicis for example, Stylebop.com, online, we are in Hong Hong, in Japan, in the US, basically on every continent. The funny thing is that with our online shop we do ship regularly on every continent. Always when there is some order from Australia we all freak out because this is like the other end of the world, so we´ve made it so far. We are basically everywhere, i try to be reacheable and available worldwide, this is what we do.
So, that´s all, my dear readers, i´ll leave you with a little movie from that day made by Warda Network and a nice postcard i found of a Fräulein Briefträger in a sweet uniform. Very curious to see how the new Austrian post uniforms are going to turn out ;)
