Eclectic Swedish Autodidact
Creating her own fashion label and selling her first one off designs in Stockholm stores before the age of sixteen, Diana Orving has evolved into something of an eclectic autodidact and become a lifeiscarbon® favorite. Finding her influences in a broad range of sources that span literature, dance and art, the Swedish fashion designer is well known for always launching her new collections with highly unconventional catwalk shows that border on performance art. One of her recent collections was launched at Elverket Theatre in Stockholm and took the form of a play starring four actors.
The focus of Diana Orving's collections is a desire to explore and try to understand the importance of the garments and power of apparel from a personal as well as broader cultural perspective.
Almost always, the creative point of departure is people; drawing inspiration from their bodies, their movements and from their personal stories. Her designs involve innovative uses of ruching, draping and cutting to create voluminous but unstructured silhouettes with varying fabric weights and textures creating added interest. Slippery satin, transparent net and chiffon, elasticated synthetics and crumpled cotton are all much in evidence. Look below to read more about this innovative Scandinavian designer and to see some of Diana Orving’s recent creations:
“I believe I’ve developed a freer approach by not having learned right from wrong. By making mistakes, I’ve found my own right way of doing things.”
The unifying theme in Diana Orving’s creations is an organic feel: often there is the impression that a garment has grown by itself and, without any resistance, molded itself onto the wearer’s body. Color palettes are usually muted and dominated by black, beige and white. The focus is more on form than on color. The designer’s interest centers on the actual construction of the garments (she uses draping as a technique and constructs the clothes on people rather than dress forms), as well as on the relationship between the clothes and their wearers (she tries to build elements of surprise into her clothes and ensures that it's possible to modify them depending on the wearer).
All in an effort to explore what it means to wear clothes and to dress up: “To me, clothing is about people and their stories, perhaps more than it is about fashion.”
For those of our readers based in Stockholm, there’s still a chance to see the textile creation that Diana Orving has created at the Nordic Light Hotel. Using the improvisational approach used in her clothing design, the designer has created a collection of textile rooms in the hotel’s lobby. Hand-painted fabrics in various textures and levels of transparency, such as cotton fabric, silk, tulle and chiffon, have been cut into hundreds of uniquely shaped pieces and then linked together to form a collection of hanging spaces.
“Staying at a hotel is about moving into a room, quickly making it your own, and then passing it on to someone else. The combination of intimacy and formality that you experience at a hotel interested me and was the inspiration behind my work. With my textile rooms and curtains, the most formal part of the hotel, the lobby, allows visitors to withdraw and screen themselves off in both senses of the word.”
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