Interview With Victoria Louise Geaney
One of the selected authors by the fIrst creative call of What’s More Alive than you whose shoes collection H.R.H. is right now realized.
What’s More Alive Than You presents in these days its first permanent Collection showing as preview a series of shoes and bags designed thanks to the Creativity of 15 Young students and professionals unknown to the general public, but With great skills and talent.
among them not only fashion designers but also architects and product designers, who have accepted the multidisciplinary challenge offered by What’s More Alive Than You by creating objects really special, suitable for those who want to stand out, with the spirit of this new Italian brand which offers wearable objects closer to the world of art and design than to the rules of traditional fashion.
This new brand and its ambitious project are recognized by the press about fashion, design and art of 72 countries. Several universities around the world already involved their students in our creative calls launched several times per year for the design of the collections; among them 15 are already actively working together in partnership. There are already 45 people selected as authors of the artworks, some of them presented in the first permanent Collection and they come from 19 different countries. A project that started just over a year ago but is creating so much interest and curiosity in thousands of people who every day visit the institutional website.
We therefore wanted to ask one of the authors of the selection one, Whose artworks are right now part of the first permanent collection, What she thinks and which idea she has about this new brand, thanks to her experience in this project.
The Young fashion designer is Victoria Louise Geaney, born In London 23 years ago; she is the author of a beautiful Collection of Women’s shoes With floral theme, inspired by nature and that has the names of some of the Queens of England: H.R.H.
Tell Us Who We Are and What We Are Looking For
“My name is Victoria Geaney and I am an upcoming, young British designer working and living near London, in England. I am a conceptual womenswear fashion designer, mainly specializing in innovative tailoring and shirt making. With every piece I create, I am continually questioning and challenging archaic conventions governing the making of garments. I then purposely break or twist these rules in order to create thoughtful, exciting and theoretical clothes focusing on deconstruction and intelligent pattern construction. I view myself as a multidisciplarian – simultaneously working as a practitioner of fashion design and art, which is initially the belief that led me to enter the What’s More alive than You competition, as we have a shared philosophy that designs can function both as pieces of fashion and also as artworks. I am currently designing my next collection of garments, whilst working part- time in a bespoke womenswear boutique. Ultimately, I am looking for experience in a creative and audacious fashion team, with the ultimate desire to push forward the boundaries of contemporary design – eventually leading to opening my own fashion house. My design vision is for conceptual and artistic womenswear targeting stylish, contemporary customers.”
What About Your Education and Cultural Context
“I studied fashion: innovation at the University for the Creative Arts, Epsom gaining a 1st class honors in June 2010. Prior to my degree, I studied A levels in art, English literature and language, and textiles at Beaconsfield high school before going on to study art foundation at Buckinghamshire and Chilterns University and College, and specializing in fashion and textiles. My influences are contradictory in order to balance my designs. I am inspired as much by the city as by the country and my local environment. Currently, I live and work near London, and gain a lot of inspiration from trips to art galleries and from my travels around the city. However, I also am continually inspired by natural forms within the local environment, particularly the flowers and roses in my garden in Buckinghamshire. It was these roses, which led to my development of the digital prints that make up the designs of my shoes for What’s More Alive Than You."
Which Kind of Perspective Would You Give to Fashion, Thanks to Your Work?
“The transition from post modernity into the green era continues to be a large influence on fashion, with nature and the environment being promulgated through the media as the new ideology. Green and environmental issues are at the forefront of world politics. I have designed this miniature collection of shoes, which I see as potential icons of the green era of fashion and politics, merging wearability with environmental textile design to create iconic floral pieces of art for ladies’ feet. This societal shift towards green and the environment can be seen to have influenced both the print - the beautiful tones and shapes of flowers and roses which grow and blossom just outside my window - and the materials used for the shoes, which is an Italian organic cotton! My local environment constantly inspires my practice as a fashion designer, growing up with such stunning roses just outside my window. In the wider context, this environmental element of fashion design suggests another move away from the past and the postmodern cultural dominant to an environmental and geographical ideology. Furthermore, each shoe is named after a British female Queen, to inspire strength and power through wearing my shoes, and to further emphasize the locality and country of the designs. The collection is therefore named H.R.H by Victoria Geaney.”
What do you Think About the Chance Given by What’s More Alive Than You, Which Allows you to Turn Your Background into a Career in Designing Accessories?
“I think that the brand What’s More alive than You is such a fantastic, amazing and unique opportunity to have my designs turned into a reality, and a dream that I would never have dared to have dreamt so early on in my fashion career. I am so proud and excited to be a part of it and particularly to have been chosen as one of the finalists of the first ever-creative call. When I received the email to say that I had been chosen as a finalist, I was just so extremely excited and couldn’t really believe that my shoe collection had been chosen for production! It feels incredible that my shoe designs will be available to buy online from wmaty.com from December under my design name- Victoria Louise Geaney, as at this fledgling stage in my fashion design career I wouldn’t have had the resources or opportunities available to be able to design and manufacture under my own brand name.
I think that accessory design is now something that I would be really interested in pursuing following this competition. Throughout my last year of university, my tutors were enthusiastic about my participation as a finalist of the What’s More Alive Than You competition and because of this I designed collections including shoes. Therefore it was suggested that I thought about a future in shoe design, which was an area I would previously possibly never had thought about until this contest.”
What About the Name of the Brand What’s More Alive Than You? Do you Think This Brand Name Could Reflect a Contemporary Idea of Fashion?
“I think that the brand What’s More alive than You perfectly reflects the contemporary idea of fashion, as nowadays people are expressing themselves much more through their own individual fashions and styles rather than by simply following predicted trends. It is much more personal. There is nothing more alive and flourishing than today’s fashion industry, which can be viewed as much at the shows in Milan, London, Paris and new York as on the streets of every country and city in the world. As Chanel said “fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” What’s More alive than You creates a direct link to young designers working from all over the world, to get together and say that this is our vision and version of contemporary fashion today allowing an international community of fresh designers to incorporate and merge our ideas, concepts, experiences and interpretations of modern culture and our individual environment into a collection of incredibly unique, stylish and modern artworks for What’s More alive than You.”
“I hope to answer more What’s More alive than You creative calls to produce further collections of shoes. This is a really amazing opportunity and so great just after graduating that I think it will help my career as an individual designer and in getting a job in the industry as well. Additionally, I am currently putting a version of a beautiful bespoke shirt cape that I produced for my final graduate collection, which was shown at graduate fashion Week, into production with fashion Capital to be sold online in the UK for asos.com. Furthermore, I am working part-time as a sales assistant. I think that being a finalist of the What’s More alive than You project shows that I am determined to succeed as a designer and hopefully will lead to finding a job within the fashion industry. Ultimately, I hope to run my own design label- Victoria Louise Geaney. I think I have been really lucky and fortunate enough to have had my shoe designs chosen to be produced and sold online. I hope that I will be able to give the same opportunities that I have had to young designers in the future.”
What Do you Expect by the Present and by the Future? What Could you Say to Anyone Who Wants to Join Our Creative Calls?
“I would really encourage other young designers to join the What’s More alive than You creative calls as the competition allows practitioners from all over the world with a shared passion for design, whatever their background, to create a global design community producing a varied and exciting new collection of accessories and artworks. The bags, shoes and artworks shown in the first creative call are a testament to all of the hard work and creativity of the international designers, as well as the massive belief and time undertaken by the What’s More alive than You team to realize such a huge and unique project. I would urge other designers to come together in this age of the digital and global community as the opportunity to design and have a product manufactured is so extraordinary. I really hope that this inspires other students to answer What's More Alive Than You creative calls, you never know!"
