Chris Holzinger Continued…

As promised in this past Friday’s fea­ture post, here is the remain­ing por­tion of the Q&A with Berlin based designer, Chris Holzinger:

The Fash­ion­isto: If your label was a per­son, what would they be like?

Chris Holzinger: Work­ing on col­lec­tions, I don’t relate to spe­cial human char­ac­ter­is­tics or par­tic­u­lar tar­get groups. I rather attach cer­tain attrib­utes to my design pieces like wear­a­bil­ity, qual­ity, reli­a­bil­ity, func­tion, dis­pas­sion and eter­nal­ness. It is impor­tant to design clothes which are always wear­able and which are easy to recom­bine with diverse fash­ion style move­ments and col­ors. It’s really impor­tant to me that my clothes guar­an­tee mobil­ity and flex­i­bil­ity in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions dur­ing daily routine.

TF: Do you have any fash­ion role models?

CH: Dur­ing the process of admis­sion for my fash­ion design study, I com­pleted an intern­ship in the cos­tume depart­ment of a national the­ater in Ger­many. At that time, I was lucky to also learn from an excel­lent men’s tai­lor in the tailor’s work­shop of the cos­tume depart­ment. Dur­ing that time, I gained first prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence about sewing tra­di­tional menswear. He intro­duced me to clas­si­cal design ele­ments, norms and reg­u­la­tions. Over the years, he taught me a lot about clas­si­cal and com­plex menswear pro­cess­ing. I’m fas­ci­nated by the knowl­edge and skills he has gained over many decades.  We became close friends and I’m still able to learn from him today. I’m happy that I can always count on his amaz­ing sup­port. I’m still at the begin­ning with my own label and I con­sider every com­pe­tent sup­port absolutely help­ful. For me, he became a role model mainly because of his human aspects. He always spent a lot of time explain­ing sev­eral skills to me and he was very patient. There­fore, I will always be deeply grate­ful to him.

TF: Run­ning your label, what is your daily rou­tine like?

CH: Each day starts very early, ends mostly very late and is packed with orga­ni­za­tion and surprises.

TF: Solids or prints. What is your opinion?

CH: Due to my min­i­mal­ist, sim­ple, pure but still mod­ern design phi­los­o­phy, I pre­fer the solids and mono­chrome pieces, but also in terms of col­ors using con­trasts as details. By select­ing col­ors, fab­rics and with the cre­ation of the pat­terns and the man­u­fac­tur­ing, I want to pro­vide my pieces with con­tin­u­ance and longevity. All these ele­ments of the work­ing process sup­port my inten­tions to design pieces, which last for more than one season.

TF: Where do you hope to see your label in 5 years?

CH: Of course I hope for the best regard­ing achieve­ments and devel­op­ments and I hope espe­cially that I will stay healthy in the future and will be able to use my energy in a con­struc­tive way. 5 years is a long time, espe­cially me being still in the begin­ning of man­ag­ing my own label. As a mat­ter of course, I will keep work­ing hard on devel­op­ing the label and evolv­ing as a fash­ion designer.

TF: Stockists?

CH: I am very lucky to be able to present and offer my first spring/​summer col­lec­tion 2009 “Straight On” at Tem­po­rary Show­room in Berlin.