Wednesday, February 04, 2009

A Conversation With Designer Rita Saardi!!


I got to know Rita via this blog. I found her incredibly beautiful clothes at her Pr Agent Ibeyo and fell In Love. That was the start of something!! Which I am Very happy about.

Who are you?

hi hi hi hi.... good question.... I'm my darlings darling, my mums daughter, my dads favorite ( I wish :), my sisters best friend my brothers big sister, your new friend...

What inspires you in this world today?

Everything that touches me, the sensibility in a shy boys eyes, the beauty in a beautiful movie about life, a ray of light, a cloud, a rythm in a breathtaking song, my husbands smell, a black line on a wall, a beautiful shop,a nice line from a friend, a good magazine, food, joy, sadness, important and less important stuff... Life.

Your designs are Incredibly romantic. Why do you think that is? Where did your urge to show beauty in this way come from?
I always ask myself that question... Honestly besides the fact that i am a dreamer and a hopeless romantique, i believe in human beings, in relationships and love it's normal I grew up in the heart of a lovely family with the worlds greatest parents........ but I also grew up between Lebanon and its many wars and Stockholm and the horrible long dark winters. Somewhere there I was ripped off my childhood, in my heart I'm still a child wanting beautiful things, I still can't help licking off the cream of a beautiful cake or looking at a plate of sushi and not wanting to eat it cause it's so pretty... I believe that people who goes through a lot of obstacles in life they have the tendency to be more interesting, more intense, more vulnerable I'm not ashamed of sharing my vulnerability with others, nor am i ashamed of stepping my foot down and fighting for what i want, I'm generous both ways, the contradictions in my personality, my life, the places I've been to, love ( my family's and my husbands ) everything made me what i am today, an extremely sensitive person seeing beauty everywhere but I'm not naive and I'm not fragile I'm a strong character with a weakness for beauty ( not only material beauty....) I agree that my designs are romantic but they are strong as well. don't forget that i am oriental and beauty will always be extravagant and romantic where I come from but I grew up in Stockholm, minimalism and androgyny are words i had to deal with, I guess I want to prove to myself that you can make beautiful things with whatever you have, "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder" and the designer LOL

Where did the inspiration come from for your collection Between Heaven and Earth?
as i answered earlier, life.... during the period that I worked on the collection and the exhibition I was feeling happy and I was breathing again after a period that was quiet turbulent and hard but It’s a very fragile collection, because happiness is. Using white was not a choice but an obvious direction following the idea I had in the beginning it helped me to concentrate on the essential, One day I wrote on a peace of paper Between Heaven and Earth.... I imagined a cloud, I started to see pictures in my head, I spoke about it to my husband and little by little i realized that I wanted to create something light and poetic, something dreamy and sensual.... voilĂ .... the clouds in the sky helped me a lot in my creative process... that and some French pastry LOL

Where will the fall collection lead? and why?

My Dear Lindha.... I was right when I created Between Heaven and Earth knowing that happiness is short moments in life I wanted to seaze the moment and push the bottom of the camera to get that picture forever.... Right now I'm extremely lost in my head, I'm thinking about leaving Paris.... I don't know what the future will reserve for me, I still haven't started working on my collection yet, knowing that i have to deliver it in 2 month.... it's gonna be a nervous countdown and a nervous collection, it's dark in colors, I'm feling blue.... it's exhausting cause I'm lost, it's sometimes shapeless, sometimes too expressive sometimes too obvious sometimes foggy.... I'm sure it's going to be as romantic and poetic as the last one but in a completely different state of mind.

What is your favorite: Music? Movie? Artist?

The questions not to ask.... I am a movie addict and a musicohollic LOL .... it's honestly hard to answer this question....
lets just say that the last movie I saw was " Slumdog Millionaire" I loved it ( notice already the contradiction in the title...)
Music, I am actually listening to Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, "Latika's Theme" A.R Rahman... it's quiet blue..... but if you ask me the same questions tomorrow I'm sure I'll answer something completely different, like Feist "Inside out" or something even sexier and favorite movie The Curious case of Benjamin Button cause that's what i'm going to see tonight and i'm sure I'm gonna like it.... Brad Pitt... why wouldn't I....LOL
Artist, i refuse to have a favorite.... every artist has something that i like....

Do you have a rolemodel?

Again.... no Idols, no favorite singer or actor or artist.... people change, nothing is fixed, so i keep changing my mind, my dad often used to say one should take the best from each person and culture you meet and throw away the bad stuff, that way you can only get further in life and closer to your ideologies...I agree with that... I learn something from everyone... even bad people, they teach me to be less and less naive more and more careful etc.... but my parents are probably my first rolemodels...

What are the dreams of yours? The boutique?Meaning of Life?

I want to live together with the people i love, my husband, my family( mum, dad, Benjamin, Sandy ), hoping to share my dreams and ideas with friends I have and friends I would love to have that are looking for the same important things in life as myself...and try to reach them together.
that is the most important thing....
when it comes to more material things, I want so much, there are no limits to my dreams or the goals I want to achieve....

I want a beautiful Boutique with clothes I love....a private garden which consists of all the flowers I adore.......paintings with my favorite artist and all in this store where one will be able to buy Everything from the interior to the hangers (and flowers). I too want to work with others; graphic, ceramic, glass, wood, paper designers but too work with various stylists and photographers etc etc. I want to create things, create images, create films, create stories that one later sell to people who really appreciate, like and understand the underlying idea of it all. I want to sell magazines and books that I love.....And in the heart of the store will my clothes and accessories take place.....That is what I would love to do....I might even sell other designers clothing there.

I would like to work with other women in Lebanon and Syria where the handycraft is still available and the sensibility is still like in the old days.... I would love to have a house by the sea in Lebanon but first the war has to stop... I would love to learn new things, how to make a bowl in ceramique or a vase in glass.....
I would love to share my husbands dreams, help him to have all the Nike shoes he still dreams of collecting, opening a sneaker shop, traveling together to the places we dream about..... eating food we want to try....watching sunsets together all over the globe, making movies together and learning how to take good pictures with our new great camera :)
I would want to give back all the love and support that my family gives me.... But that is a goal I will never achieve cause there are no limits to their generosity...

Her Inspirations, thoughts and work can be viewed here: Rita Saardi

Thank You Rita!!! For this.
xx
Lindha

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