Paula Mihovilovic’s presents MA collection at CSM
THIS IS SO YOU - Sarabande Scholar Paula Mihovilovic’s brings her fabulous drama to the Central Saint Martins MA Final show. Paula was chosen for the Sarabande BA scholarship by Kim Jones. Soon to graduate on the MA course at CSM, we caught up with Paula to hear the ins and outs of her MA collection.
'The only way I could actually express myself was through clothing and my collection is a perfect reflection of how I dress and how I talk in a sense, how I express myself.'
Can you talk me through the direction you took for your final collection? This year I wanted to do quite an instinctive collection where my entire process is my closet and my styling. You know, when I was little, I had a lot of issues when it comes to speaking and writing and in order to go to a, a normal primary school, I had to go to a on the side school for disabilities. I still have issues speaking, talking, spelling. I mean, I can't spell my surname, so I feel like the only way I could actually express myself was through clothing and my collection is a perfect reflection of how I dress and how I talk in a sense, how I express myself.
You know, it's all about these almost modern couture take on gowns that are actually turned into pants that you can wear on the on the subway or on the street. It's kind of a gown for street style in a way. Yes, it has a lot of elements of kind of sportswear where it kind of combined neoprene with lace, it's sexy, but quite elegant. I have a lot of headpieces that I made myself - I'm inspired by millinery, and I feel like millinery should come back in fashion.
'My garments should be worn to Tesco if I want them to - I want models to always feel beautiful wherever they go, and that's what I do actually.'
What are your intentions when you design? My intentions for my designs is to always be overdressed for an occasion. You know, my garments should be worn to Tesco if i want them to - I want models to always feel beautiful wherever they go, and that's what I do actually. Every time I go out, I have to look fabulous - it's just because I want to feel fabulous. You know no matter how negative you feel, sometimes dressing yourself up, maybe even over dressing yourself can make you feel so much confidence.
There's a lot of hats within the collection, can you talk me through your approach with the headwear? My idea for this collection was I had a lot of hats, and all of them were quite cool, but I felt like they were not me enough. So what I started doing is sort of layering a hat on top of a hat and yeah, and there kind of created this kind of a 3D dimension kind of look on them. I feel like all of us on the side are quite classy, but together they've become a bit more of a art piece in a sense of all of these little kind of roses are inspired by my rose dresses. The roses use a draping technique where you just kind of try swirling a rose and you try it so many times until you like the drape that you create. You do it all on the head stand, after that, it's quite a long process of hand stitching because majority of these hats are hand-stitched and hand-stitched with the feathers as well. Yes, it's quite long, but it's rewarding because creating hats for me is something I do in my free time to relax because I don't go out and it's really therapeutic to use them.I love feathers and I feel like it's for some reason I feel like they're quite dramatic. I don't know why. The movement with them, I feel like they create volume without actually being a huge headpiece, if that makes sense, because they float around and as well, I feel like they're quite traditional as well, I want to bring them into street style because I rarely see people wearing these kinds of hats on the street, you know?
The collection is titled 'This Is So You', talk me through how you reached that title for the collection? This collection is called This Is So You, because every time anyone would see a garment I designed in this collection, they were like, this is so you. This is something you would wear? Or is this from your closet or is this, you know, did you make this? Which is really rare because all my life I struggled to design how I dress and I feel like I finally achieved that freedom of, you know, I always kind of held myself back in fear of designing something ugly and this is finally a moment where I designed something for myself, and I didn't care how other people would perceive it.