It’s Not Easy To Create Chaos
This post is about a tremendous creative endeavor: A wedding dress; more precisely, THE wedding dress and, even more precisely, MY wedding dress. For those who don’t know me, I am a fanatic. I know, you wouldn’t associate the mushiness of it all with me, right? Well, I like wedding gowns, it’s a thing, get over it.
It wouldn’t be me, if I didn’t, first, walk you through a little bit of science.
Do you know how complicated it is to generate chaos, meaning random numbers? There is always a pattern lurking in the shadow somewhere, always a formula. I know this because as part of my Ph.D., I had to generate some random coefficients in order to produce turbulence (chaos). The machines, in this case a computer code, much like us, like patterns, hence the difficulty.
What does randomness/chaos have to do with a dress?
It’s pretty simple. When Alin and I decided to get married, I already started to put together thoughts for my dress. It was going to be somewhere at the intersection between Cortana and the nude collection from Vera Wang, and possibly some rock’n’roll. Everything put through the crazy filter. The result was supposed to be easy to wear, possibly wearable in the future, totally relaxed so I wouldn’t have to worry about sitting properly, parts showing, dancing, stepping on it and the usual wear and tear. So, a practical dress with a hint of crazy.
Here is where Florina Ivașcu stepped in.
At first, I showed her an inspirational/aspirational piece and we discussed how doable it was. Then we completed the board with many variations on the topic. We chose the materials and had two fittings, which is highly unusual, I know. But she made the most out of them. Of course, the fact that the dress was geometrically simple and there were not tight parts helped a lot.
It all sounds easy in principle. That is because, from my side, it was. From where Florina was standing, however, I am sure things were a bit more complicated.
How do I know this? It’s not that I was a terrible customer, because really, once I got to talk to her for the first time, she inspired trust, so I pretty much let her do her thing because I was confident she was great at it. It’s the fact that every now and again she came back to me with different suggestions, different combinations of colors, materials and geometries. Every iteration brought us closer to the organized chaos I had dreamed about.
If you look at the skirt, you will just see a bunch of ruffles. You will not see the three different types of tulle Florina used, or the different strips of different lengths that make for the randomness aspect, or the slightly darker tulle sewn in the front that breaks the light shade of the dress. All I can say is that before it looked like this, my dear dress went through two other shapes. In the end, Florina and I decided for this version because it simply suited better.
This is not a commercial, these are heartfelt words from a really happy exigent customer.
If you need a special dress, just talk to Florina, she knows how to help! 🙂
Joke aside, I think it’s very important that a designer knows … design, but it’s equally important that he/she listens, understands and tries to empathize with the customer, and, better yet, is receptive. The most important thing is that the recipient, in this case, me, feels good in the clothing item. If this happens, the outcome will be graceful and beautiful.
So you see, designing the perfect dress, or chaos, as I like to think of it, it’s more like a symbiosis between one person’s desire and another one’s knowledge; they both have to do their part and respect and accept each other’s desires and observations.
For the future, here are some useful links where you can find Florina:
http://zenya.ro/product-category/designers/florina-ivascu-designers/
https://www.facebook.com/ivascuFIV