A.P.monde - FASHIONCLASH Festival 2017

photo Christina Stohn

Meet Anja Perisic. She designs Kimonos for her brand A.P.monde, She also designs costumes for stage productions and develops patterns for the brand Ann Demeulemeester. 9 years ago she finished her studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee. Anja was born in Sarajevo, but grew up in Antwerp, Belgium. She lived in Berlin for a while and now she’s back in Belgium. Anja always knew that she wanted to work in the field of design. She grew up between art galleries and theaters. Choosing to make design her profession felt very natural for her. The real surprise was starting her own business. She has worked for great minds like Ann Demeulemeester, Terry Gilliam, Christoph Waltz and Jan Fabre. But winning Fashion One’s first season of Design Genius gave her the mental and financial boost she needed to create her own brand, so far Anja’s biggest pride and joy. At the moment Anja is designing the next A.P.monde collection. She’s developing patterns for Ann Demeulemeester 2018 and she’s mentoring a master costume design program at the Antwerp Academy. The thing she loves most about her profession is how we need to go through various stages in order to develop a new design. Research, sourcing, drawing, experimenting (when there is time), development of a collection, shoots, marketing, sales, and then it all starts all over again. Each time the journey takes you somewhere new and unexpected. That to Anja is exhilarating.

AVADEM by Anouk van der Meij

Please introduce yourself: 
AVADEM is the fashion label by Anouk van der Meij, a fashion design graduate from the School of Arts in Utrecht. With AVADEM she stands for more spirituality and comfort in the (fashion) world. It gives you the option to wear something comfortable and look edgy and fashionable. She encourages dressing in more lounge and oversized clothing, with wide shapes and lots of layering. This way she tries to make people wearing her clothes feel more happy in their own skin.’ 

STRIKKS - knitwear made in Maastricht

Please introduce yourself: 
STRIKKS is a design studio and label for the development and making of designer knits, located in Maastricht, The Netherlands. It is a lab for researching the possibilities of knitting and production processes. We offer a collection of clothing and interior products that are knitted, or that have a clear link to the knitting technique. Knitted pullovers, cardigans, scarves, pillows, throws or bags. Each product you buy, is not just one of many. We produce limited editions and special requests made to measure. 

What inspires you in general? 
Textures. That could be anything, from a microscopic image of paper and soap to the hesitating lines from a pencil or a marker. Just as long the image gives us enough information to create interesting constructions we can experiment with.