We have been stripped of the right to a democratic vote, of the ability to pave our own way, and the freedom to create art that challenges the political reality we inhabit. So, my work has been shaped by a lot of bitter-sweetness. I am lucky to have the opportunity to do what I do where I do it, but I constantly yearn for the life that I could have back home and feel a certain amount of guilt leaving it behind. As part of my collection I created fabric prints of images my friends have sent me from Tbilisi, capturing graffiti tags across my hometown. Graffiti is one of the most interesting forms of protest. It is raw, accessible, and public. The city itself becomes the canvas for the voices that the government aims to silence. As political tensions rise, so does the presence of street art. For me, these markings are artifacts, imprinting them into my work feels like bringing the streets of Tbilisi to life and carrying them over into a new form.

Your silhouettes speak in a certain dialect. What emotions or tensions are stitched into them?

As of right now, a lot of the work I have done has been shaped by political references, silhouettes included. I have referenced Soviet school uniforms, traditional Georgian garments, and some illustrations of the Georgian epic “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin” by Shota Rustaveli.

For a long time I gravitated towards larger silhouettes, ones that have a presence, but as I continued on with my research for this collection, I saw them slowly come closer to the body, having traces of sharpness and structure but still embellished with delicate flowing qualities. A lot of it speaks to an emotional aspect that I carry into my work – something delicate, transparent, vulnerable, accompanied by a harshness, a presence, maybe anger.

What was the initial spark that drew you to fashion design, and how has your vision evolved since then?

I’ve grown up in a family of women who loved the craft of sewing. My mom and my grandma have always made their own clothes, and naively I sat at their sewing machines at the age of probably five or six and made random stitches on pieces of fabric, pretending I was also making something valuable. I always observed their way of dressing and admired it from a distance, drawing inspiration and making small doodles of models with various designs I had thought of in my brain. Growing up, pursuing fashion has always felt like a distant dream, and something that would likely be impossible for me because I did not think that I would be able to find a way into that realm from where I was, which was Georgia. At the time, there were no Georgian designers that had made it on a global scale, there was no real opportunity to even enter that world. Eventually, Demna Gvasalia rose to fame, this was a turning point for me and my motivation to pursue my dream. Demna represented my culture on a global scale, he was from a country that people did not even know existed, and that is exactly what felt like a spark: the very idea of representing an unheard community. Fashion has always been at the forefront of cultural resistance. It has always been a reflection of the society it lives in, what that society values, and in turn, what it defies.