Channel the Heroine/ Lāčplēsene

I can't add any season or year to the name of this collection, because I started making it almost a year ago (it's summer 2020 now), and I am sure I will continue adding to it...forever!

The CONCEPT

The idea came from the podcast I am creating here in Latvia called Lāčplēsene. In the podcast I talk to different women that are inspirational to me and others. After recording many episodes I realised that all every day heroines - Lāčplesenes have common qualities and characteristics, and I started a little library of those qualities. Every time I talked to one of them, or read about a world known Lāčplēsene, I thought which of the qualities I would like to adopt my self. And then I thought, that it would be wonderful if I could channel each of them in certain occasions of my life. 

The PROCESS

At the beginning, with your help, I came up with eleven characteristics or qualities that are common to women who inspire us. Then I decided that collection  should also celebrate real well known women and in developing the accessory collection I thought of six universally well known women that bear these characteristics and decided to challenge my self and create accessories with their portraits. Create wearable art pieces, that would encourage you to almost channel the strengths of that particular women, by honouring her. 

Later the dresses in hand printed patterned fabrics were also added to the collection and named after known historical women, that has changed the world we live in and are continuing to do so! All of the dresses, culottes or skirt are made from natural fibre fabrics - either linen or cotton - and the Heroine/Lāčplēsene pattern is hand-printed on the fabrics here in Riga in screen-printing technique. The printing was done by me and the artist and very knowledgeable printing master Sabine Vekmane-Ābele at Luste Screen-printing studio.

 

The PHOTO-SHOOT

Most of the actual designing and production process happened during the first months of Covid 19 pandemic here in Europe. Staring from the middle of the March and into the months of Summer.  As I was thinking about the collection and how I would like to present it I understood that I don't want to plan the usual photo shoot, as I did for the previous accessory collections. I wanted to make the photos more personal, more adequate to times of distancing and also not to make only pictures of the accessories, but to make photos of women that are real life heroines/ Lāčplēsenes and to tell you more about them and their livelihoods. I took photos of them my self in their natural habitat - their workplaces. Their offices and studios and workshops, so you get to know