Viktoria Marchev: Fashion Designer
PHOTOGRAPHY: DOBRIN MARCHEV WWW.DOBRINMARCHEV.COM
The Museum of Science Fiction presents a collection by award-winning designer Viktoria Marchev.
This capsule collection was designed to highlight silicone rubber and focus on three aspects of it. We were intrigued by the science fiction aesthetic and functionality of the material and wanted to see Viktoria explore its potential.
about the designer
Viktoria Marchev is a New-York based Hungarian native and has been experimenting with creating molded pieces of silicone rubber since 2014, a versatile material that supports her sci-fi ambience concepts. The technology developed and the pieces created besides being visually pleasing, waterproof and enduring are highly eco-friendly, as there is no waste produced during the creative process and keeping them clean hardly needs water and chemicals. Since her first silicone rubber collection S/S2015 ‘CLONES’, she created 5 more collections upgrading the technology with each and every season to come. Her designs have been featured in fashion magazines, International Fashion Weeks, including New York Fashion Week and she was recenlty awarded by the A’Design Prize for her silicone rubber designs.
For more information about the designer visit: www.viktoriamarchev.com
3D
MOLDED PATTERNS
As the “fabric” itself is created through pouring, the thickness can be individually defined for every piece. I usually make them to a 1/8” (3 mm) thick layer. This thickness provides me with enough flexibility for my skin-tight designs and also allows me to play within the mm-s and create in-depth 3-dimensional patterns. Also I find it important that this thickness will give a nice hold to the garment without wrinkling.
IN-DEPTH EXPERIENCE
For this particular design I used hexagons to create a 3D look. On most of my designs I love to use circles because of the perfection of this shape, however if the molds are created with precision any shape can create a nice in-depth experience.
Waterproof
ON THE SURFACE
Silicone as a type of rubber is a 100% waterproof material, which contributes to the easy maintenance of the garments. Basically the pieces can be cleaned with a shower head and towels for regular use and can be disinfected with alcohol if needed.
BETWEEN THE LAYERS
To further enhance this spectacular quality of the material I injected “water” between layers of silicone, a colored and a transparent layer for better visibility. This is a technology I developed for my S/S2019 collection ‘SPLASH’, which I had the wonderful opportunity to showcase at NYFW in 2018. For this project I upgraded this concept, by adding extra space between the layers, so the water doesn’t have to push the transparent layer and modify the water pocket’s shape, but can freely flow between the layers and stay flat between them.
Integrity
DIVERSITY WITH ONE MATERIAL
Given the fact that any shape, any thickness, any color and pattern can be created because of the nature of the material, the pieces can be diverse yet have integrity at the same time. Different layers of silicone can bond together in perfect harmony without any external accessories needed, as the “connections'“ can be part of the “fabric”.
PERFECT MATCH
As the different parts are created with the same mold, moreover one layer happens to be the mold for the next layer they perfectly click into each other creating a perfectly matching bond. For this particular design I made two layers with different shades of blue, creating a piece whose parts embrace each other.
Behind the Scenes
HAND-MIXED COLORS
The pieces are all colored individually which provides Marchev with a lot of freedom in designing her collections. The colors are hand-mixed and applied to each piece before pouring them into the mold. The color scheme for this project is white, cyber blue and royal blue.
CAREFULLY CRAFTED MOLDS
Marchev uses silicone to create the first molds, and she uses simple tools to craft the pieces by hand. For this project she created molds with hexagon shapes to emphasize the 3D pattern feature of the garments. This is a back and forth process, creating a 1st set of patterns, then pouring a layer to create a mold and then pouring the actual piece. It requires some patience and attention to details but she feels the results are very rewarding.
TWO COMPONENTS AND A RUSH
All the pieces are made of liquid silicone rubber, which after the pouring cures into that soft rubbery substance, which forms the fabric of the garments. The silicone Marchev is using is a two-component material, by mixing them together the process starts and allows her to shape the liquid into the desired form.
This process is time-limited to the pot life of the material. It means that the design and the preparation has to be more labor-intensive as the pouring itself cannot exceed its time limits and is very sensitive to changes in the temperature, too.
Usually Marchev has a thermometer with her to know if the room’s temperature is appropriate to benefit from the whole pot life of the silicone she is using at the moment, which can vary by the type, for the one she used the most for this project can be as short as about 10 minutes. Even though the complete curing time is much longer then for how long she has the freedom to shape it. For that reason creating a piece during the summer sometimes can be challenging, as heat accelerates the process. (Obviously it can have its own advantages when we want to speed up the creative process for a large number of orders.)