Ioannis Dimitrousis
interviewed for Schön! 3
Greek fashion designer Ioannis Dimitrousis is an experimentalist who merges unusual fabric and decorative effects. Dimitrousis graduated from the London College of Fashion in 2005 with a degree in Menswear, creating contemporary designs and exploring traditional hand-crafted techniques. His professional debut was in 2006 at the ‘On/Off’ schedule event at London Fashion Week, where he attracted acclaim from the worldwide fashion press. The core appeal behind Dimitrousis’ collection is the vast selection of materials – precious stones, crystals, pearls and beads – and that it is not subject to a narrow colour range. Notorious for fabric manipulation and using organic materials, Dimitrousis now designs for women as well.
You graduated with a degree in Menswear. How did you transition to creating clothes for women?
“My menswear always had a twist of womenswear, until I have done my first show during London Fashion Week to discover that my womenswear attracted more people and a new audience. It seems like that my womenswear is shadowing my menswear at the moment, as there is more demand.”
Who would you like to see wearing your clothes?
“At the moment I am targeting an elite market as most of my designs are quite expensive; anyone who feels confident in my designs, as long as they have a sense of fashion and a nice style.”
Is there any particular application, style of work or technique that you’re currently experimenting with?
“I try to experiment on my current techniques, such as tailoring and crochet with beadwork or sequins. I want to take those two into another level of creativity as I feel that they are my strongest elements and they need more development. “
Silk seems to be the main fabric in your latest collection. Why is that?
“It’s a material out of natural resources, organic, it feels nice, and I found those silk tailored fabrics which are quite rare and I really wanted to use them.
Also the yarn I used for all the crochet pieces is organic silk, which is a good contrast with the plastic sequins.”
What do you hope to achieve with your designs?
“The ideal would be if my designs would be remembered in later generations, and if my work did influence fashion at all. But until then, it is to make my collections more accessible to a wider audience and not only the elite, as it is quite difficult to get hold of pieces of my collections.”
What’s exciting now in fashion?
“All that big worry about the recession and how you see fashion houses transforming their collections into much more commercial, safe and wearable clothes, without any experimentation or any vibrant creativity on the actual clothes. Only few designers still manage to get both.”
Design / Ioannis Dimitrousis
Styling/ Yasuhiro Takehisa
Shoes/ Office
Jewellery/ Kathryn Marchbank for ioannisdimitrousis
Post Production/ Lynol Lui
