We would say it’s the long–standing friendship that we’ve had since the secondary school and this somewhat magical bond of understanding that we share. To find a friend with whom you can finish off each other’s sentences is very rare. This similar outlook on the world and how things should happen and take form is the way how we express our being to the world. And in most cases it’s so easy because we share a complete understanding of what we as a label want to portray and communicate. We add to each other’s vision and skill sets with our own strong sides, and that is how we discover new forms of how to solve things, implement ideas and realize our projects.

Yes, in a time when female bodies keep on getting over–sexualised we wish to bring back the concealed intimacy. Something that is mysterious, covert and belongs only to women themselves. We want to offer an alternative way of seeing your being and body, and ultimately dressing it accordingly. For such a long time swimwear and lingerie has been all about sexuality, being desirable and the fruit of someone else’s imagination. Let’s change that! We’re not denying this side of the human being, no. It’s completely natural and necessary but we want women to express sexuality, femininity and confidence for the sake of themselves, no one else! We all desire to stand out, feel wanted and loved, and have something unique just for ourselves, and that should go together with functionality, being comfortable and feeling respectful. We want to encourage self–love and acceptance. We don’t want to point out flaws or offer a perfect image to which women should live up to by changing themselves, but truly embrace who they are and acknowledge their self–worth, no matter if they are skinny, well–endowed, covered in freckles or wrinkles. It’s all about how honest and confident we allow ourselves to be.

Those are just inveterate stereotypes of how we should feel and act as women, and it’s completely old–school if you ask us. We’re at a place and time where every one of us can freely choose the way we communicate our being – whether to shout out our sexuality or keep it alluringly sacred to be shared with the one of our own choosing. We believe that a confident state of mind and a strong personality is what makes a person charming. An intelligent and considerate being. Women that embody strength in a seemingly fragile beauty.

Fast fashion is a dead end, it’s too worthless and unsustainable to leave you mentally and physically satiated. Not to mention it’s devastating to the environment and people tied in the process of making it. It’s a waste of time, money and the human potential and energy. As a brand we’re fully aware that we cannot be 100% sustainable because there will always be something that’s harming the environment. And as we stand for high quality, durability and long lasting shapes, colours and aesthetics, we just cannot produce swimwear out of ecological cotton no matter how much we would love to. In that case the life span of such clothing would be just a couple of months and that would be even more unsustainable because you end up buying and throwing out more. That’s why we’re putting our efforts into producing everything locally in Latvia, using just as much fabrics as we need not to leave leftovers or overproduce, taking care of our resource management, and ethical and financial well–being of people tied to our label.

Mostly it is art that we find inspiring. Also the subjects and observations of the world around us lead to creativity and the need to express our voice and way of envisioning fashion. And travel helps too! It just gives that distance you most necessarily need to look back on to the things and processes you’ve already gone through. Frequently those are photo series that ignite the interest of a particular aesthetic or an unsettling feeling that’s almost tangible and that we would like to capture or explore in our process. For the SS17 collection, called Athirst, inspiration was drawn from the work of photographer Peter Kaaden. 

What we aim for is that fashion would have this high artistic quality, creating garments as sort of a master piece. However in our work we see swimwear and lingerie as fashion design not art because for us the timelessness of products mean that they most certainly have to be functional and comfortable with the thought of the wearer in mind. The art side of the process kicks in when we present our collections – we strive to do it in an unconventional way, exhibiting them as a part of an installation or a live performance to give the garments a more alive and personal character. We also started doing that because we were tired of the usual fashion show attitude and way of presenting fashion. Because creating the pieces has taken so much time, effort and love that we just wouldn’t want to diminish that to those “10 minutes of fame” of a runway show.

We want to show real women – inspiring, charismatic and strong in their inner being no matter the size, standardised body shape, or an individual opinion on “flaws”. We stand for body positivity where it’s being curvy or thin as long as it’s healthy and does not damage one’s emotional, mental or physical state. We chose Vika not just because of body positivity but because of her personality, her warm–hearted inner being and what she stands for. And you can see this charismatic persona in the pictures. She’s a photographer herself so it was interesting for all of us to place her on the other side of the camera too. We would like to regard our brand as open to all body types, diversity and above all – an honest outlook on your own existence.

We’ve created a long–standing collaboration with Julia since she photographed our first collection Captured. She always manages to envision and portray the exact image and feeling that we have regarding a particular collection, mood or aesthetics. Our way of looking onto female body and what feeling to capture it in has always been heading in the same direction. So we started doing our collection presentations together and she created photos for all of those happenings. We went to Berlin Fashion Film Festival with our co–created and curated art, jewellery and photography installation ‘Athirst’. We decided that for this particular collection we should create a more lucid, alive feeling so she created moving images – cinemagraphs. The installation was about the continuous thirst for time of the modern human – our aspiration for balance, fulfilment, success and desires that lead to getting scorched from time to time.

These short films are a way to prolong, expand and deepen the message and visual aesthetics we want to express. It is another medium, a dimension in which to show the garments, the mood that is connected to it, and give it all a more pictorial feeling. To create some sort of a sensation regarding the pieces and the character that’s captured in it. Our team is a bunch of creative personalities and making these kind of short films also release the flow of creative thinking, as well as push ourselves outside the usual working methods and perceptions.