Designer quickie: Teo Perić

For a while now I am following your work and the way you showcase it. You are not keen to show at media events and to speak publically, what is the reason behind it?

One of my friends interprets my avoidance of media as a paranormal behavior (even when I do attend a media event) and he saids that paranormal is always IN. I don't have a special reason for not showing up at media events, I do come if I am interested and invited but I am aware that I am perceived as a private and shy person.

Your pieces seem to be made with „real“ everyday women in mind, they are wearable, romantic, seductive, how would you describe your average client? Who is she?

For me, all women are divas! They walk every day over invisible red carpet to work, to pick up their kids at the kindergarten, to meet a friend for a coffee or to go out clubbing at night. My clients are working, urban women who wants to be elegant all day long, but still quite chic when it is appropriate. I nurture retro chic style of designing clothes, I want and try to create timeless pieces or to redesign historically timeless pieces.

Photos: www.moda.hr editorial

In one of your interview I have read that you would like to design shoes. Do you have any concrete plans in that department currently? Which Croatian producer did you have in mind? Would you have your own brand of shoes?

All that I wanted to do so far in life I managed to do, but on a bit different way. However designing shoes has remained my unfulfilled wish unfortunately so far.  I would definitely design my own collection, the only company technically capable to produce a proper shoe in Croatia is Borovo factory in Vukovar.

Footwear is different then clothing, in shoe making millimeters matter, if you make a minor mistake that shoe is no good anymore, it is very hard to make a good quality shoe!

Past March you have presented your 10^thcollection for local clothing brand Mak. How satisfied are you with this cooperation? Is it more profitable and safer for Croatian designer to build his own brand or to work for an established clothing brand? What are advantages and disadvantages based on your experience?

Based on positive media and client feedback on my last show, which I had on last Cro-a-porter, I am very happy with my long term cooperation with Mak clothing brand. I am very proud that I managed to build up Mak brand with my collections in Croatian market.

To have own clothing brand is an ultimate goal of every fashion designer. I design my own line under the name Teo.P, this brand is idle at the moment. Mak clothing brand collections I sign as Teo Perić.  For a number of seasons now I have in parallel design as a contributor for numerous fashion houses and my own brands (which is 4 collections a year).

To have own line means having your own design style and creative freedom and to take upon all of the responsibility for the results. Designing for other clothing brands means designing within a predetermined frame for already existing customer pool. Creating two totally different collections in style is quite exhausting and demanding, but every real love story hurts a bit, so does this mine fashion love story.

Why do you show your collections at Cro-a-porter? Do you think there are to many fashion events in Croatia?

I have tremendous respect towards the organizer Viktor Drago who started this event 10 years ago and challenged all other local events.  I think Cro-a-porter is very influential in branding of Croatian fashion designers and creating a local fashion market. Thank you Viktor!

You were offered to move and work abroad but you decided to stay in Croatia, why?

I see life as a puzzle which always misses one piece. During 90's I was interested into working abroad, and in 1996. In Seoul I got the offer from Ebenezer Company to stay and work in Korea. However, as I returned back home I got offered a job as a main designer for the local fashion brand  Nebo.

After 6 years working for Nebo I have continued my fashion journey with my own brand, store and a studio in the city center in Zagreb.

Do you think that in today’s economy it is important for a designer to be equally good business man as a talented designer?

It is quite rare that a talented designer is also a capable business man. Designers are usually artists, artists are cheap. In today’s economy, market and in fashion system, a talented fashion team without a good businessman can hardly succeed. A successful international designer brands lie on such designer- businessman collaborations.

Every season you show quite mature, complete, good quality and wearable collections, you don’t follow trends much and many of your pieces could be cold classics which can be worn season in and season out. Do you think that women in Croatia recognize and appreciate well made clothes or are we to focus on trends and name on the label?

Trend factor is a measure of quality for most, producer and a shopper but also for some designer. I don't follow trends, I don't think I make them; I focus on making timeless pieces.

Croatians are very fashion nation, especially women, who very much appreciate and buy good quality fabrics and making. I come from a family of tailors and clothes makers – my biggest role model is my late father who was a tailor. My mother is a true fashionista with an amazing style and my sisters have tought me all about trends, anti-trends, branded and unbranded clothes.

Do you think that Croatian designer made clothes can compete with price and quality with mass produced low end brands like H&M and Zara?

No, but with Croatia entering EU I see more potential of Croatian designers working with local clothing factories on mass factory producing their collections and selling them globally. Current situation in Croatian textile industry is not allowing this to happen.

How do you see the fashion bloggers, social media and street style influencing fashion industry globally? Is this influence positive or negative?

Fashion defines who we are; this is where I think fashion bloggers came from a need to express ourselves, our personality, through clothes we wear. I see this as a positive trend and influence on global fashion industry as they inspire and leave no one ambiguous, which is good for design and industry overall. 

Cro-A-Por qué?

Boris Pavlin FW 2010.

First and foremost I would like to remind on the disclaimer written bellow on my blog. I am not completely biased while writing this as I am working for the company sponsoring another fashion event in Croatia - Dreft Fashion Week.

         The other event I am commenting here is being organized in another smaller city in a different zip code and sponsored by a smaller competitor company to mine so I will refrain from commenting on this company inputs to the event as this blog is about fashion only.

CROATIAN FASHION INDUSTRY SITUATION

 As I have written before in my posts. There are three main fashion events in Croatia: fashion.hr, Cro-a-porter and Fashion Week Zagreb.  Each claiming to be the best. 

Just based on the country size, available talent pool, lack of proper/modern fashion and business education, available budgets and capability of all the organizers, all of these people gathered together (if their egos and willingness to share the profits would allow) would maybe be capable to put together one decent fashion event per season which could export talent outside of the country and ressurect fallen Croatian fashion industry and local textile mass production.

  They are indeed all fashion professionals, some with more experience than the others but so far none has shown consistency in quality, continuous improvement and willingness to invest in their event long term. This current situation is really, really bad for such a tinny market - as the decision lays in hands of a hand full of people some of which are long overdue to finally retire.

   This is not totally organizers fault, not at all. If designers would be more entrepreneurial and more business savvy maybe the organizers would need to spend less energy on motivating them to create more wearable collections, which normal people could afford to buy and wear, and teaching them how to properly present themselves and would have enough time to negotiate sponsorships, partnerships and other complicated technicalities of the complex and labor intensive event organization (knowing the lack of financial resources, countries bureaucracy overall and current old school clans in Croatian fashion industry one has to be careful not to erode).


CRO-A-PORTE

Last night I came back from the final night of Cro-a-porte. 

First, to be honest with you I could not get over the fact that this fashion event is organized outside of the countries capital in a shopping mall, in what seems to be an empty store location. 

Second, it was obvious that there was limited space but the crowd there was not what designers needed. It seemed like the seats were limited, but there were a lot of people who were (based on their comments): family members, friends of the designers, there were kids, dogs and many people who were in some way part of the organization. 

Local celebrities as we all know came to promote themselves as they mostly borrow local designer’s clothes and never really cash out for it but rather buy foreign already established designer clothing (and why  wouldn’t they when it is similar in price as the Croatian "no name" designers). 
   In addition, there was no showroom so designers who do not have their own store were left to find their own way to return the invested fast as the collections they have shown now are for the current season F/W 2010. (which retail is already discounting).

Lastly, the events website is really bad, not updated timely and not all designers contact info/website links and the full shown collections are uploaded. 
  
There is a facebook fan page with only cc 300 members and no Twitter profile. There was an attempt, based on global trends to include local bloggers. This resulted in selecting bloggers who so far wrote a hand full of posts (with an exception of croator.net)  in total (most related to this particular event) and were extremely biased while reporting without disclaiming their agreed endorsement to the event, this is simply not fair towards their readers and not the way bloggers should function.

This seasons Cro-a-porte had positive sides as well. They are equipped with many good designers, many of which really do sell well and are really creative. Models wearing the shows were really well casted and other than being in the shopping mall, the rest areas with leather chairs and the bars surrounding the runway were much better positioned than years before.

My intention here is not to bash any of the three events, I am just writing down and posting comments I hear from local fashionistas, editors, journalists, photographers who's publishing house politics do not allow them to comment on the route cause of current fashion event orvedose in Croatia due to business connections and not wanting to get on anybodies back side as many are not professional enough to take criticism well.

My kind advise to organizers would be: why don't you retire some of your members, start from the education, organize workshops for these young creative people (designers, stylists etc.), invest in what you believe in, organize a local fashion cauncil, set some rules and guidelines and stick to them in order to create a local industry and strong fashion week - long term. 

Quality over quantity please.

Bellow you can find my favorite pieces from this season shows darlings:

Juraj Zigman FW 2010.

Boris Pavlin FW 2010.

Andreja Bistricic FW 2010.

Recension by La Kat. All rights reserved.

Photo source: www.moda.hr

"The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, 

as in what direction we are moving to."

Oliver Wendell Holmes