I recently talked to super nice Nikki DeMoneris, designer and founder of Kleonikh, about her newest collection of contemporary and beautifully draped pieces.
What was your inspiration for this collection?
For this collection, I had been inspired by fish and the movement of fish. One of the prints, the blush pink print is actually inspired by a translucent kind of fish with see through skin, which is really interesting because it was kind of veiny. Obviously I didn’t take it directly from the fish. That was the inspiration behind that print, gruesome but very pretty. I don’t use a lot of pink, but I felt it was successful for that print. I used other aspects of the fish, especially the length and fluidity of the tail of the eel. It’s pretty gruesome – it’s black and has a big thick blown up head and a very thin tail – very ghastly and crazy. That was very inspirational, because of the way it moved. There’s a Shirt dress – the Boga dress – the proportioning and the bubble- it’s actually draped this way and sewn this way – you don’t need the belt to actually hold it up. The whole process was very fluid and translucent. I used a lot of chiffon. Even the process of how they move was inspiring. It wasn’t just looking at a picture of the fish. The way they moved influenced the whole draping process. Each piece was done separately and took a lot of time. Moving forward, it’s definitely something I’d love to continue. I do a lot of the draping and patterning. I love to focus on each piece.
