TOMCSANYI x Saskia Boer
Fashion label TOMCSANYI is the child of such extremes one would find impossible to combine at first glance. Growing up in post-socialist Hungary, founder and designer Dori Tomcsanyi draws from childhood memories of happy days in the Eastern Bloc, but those retrospective aesthetics are strongly mixed with high- end fashion and top-notch minimalism. Iconic features of womenswear of the bygone days of Eastern Europe and cutting edge, modern fashion may seem exact opposites of each other, but the label manages to create a smart fusion of the two that works like crazy.
Clashing contradictory philosophies is also something the designs do. Uniformity and individualism are total enemies of each other. However, desperate desire for being unique will result in uniformized masses, but choosing bits and pieces of uniforms can individualize.
TOMCSANYI’s Spring / Summer 2016 collection travels back in time to the golden era of socialist Hungary’s Lake Balaton; a paradise-like dream of the 70s when all the folks of the Eastern Bloc were happy munching on fried hake and washed it down with wine spritzers.
The collection makes it clear that the summer of 2016 is not about exotic luxury trips, but about (re) discovering the so-called Hungarian Sea, a gemstone with lively history where there’s equal room for everyone.
Connecting to TOMCSANYI’s idea of revisiting history is photographer and editor Saskia Boer’s series ‘Yugoslavia’. Saskia is intrigued by how group identity is shaped. Often it is carefully constructed rather than a natural occurrence. In the series ‘Yugoslavia’, she documents the abstraction of borders: lines on a map that encompass our identity, whereas they are intangible in real life. It is in fact this real tangible nature where we feel most free and unrestrained.
Featuring
Fashion design // TOMCSANYI
Photography // Saskia Boer
Fashion photography // Móró Máté