Tina Kalivas

Tina Kalivas has a Greek background but has grown up in Australia. Her A/W 09 collection is inspired by the Afghan refuges and it's rather inspiring how she mixes nude colors with neon pink, orange and even bright yellows and blues.

in her own words:
I was fascinated for a while with Afghani culture just though movies I had seen like Kandahar. I was amazed at the creativity that comes from this culture considering they are living in such a harsh environment. The desert landscape itself is so confronting let alone living in caves within the mountains. When I looked more and more into the textiles that came from Afghanistan I became obsessed with getting closer to the culture. I had met a journalist in London who spent a while in Afghanistan as a spokesperson for the United Nations and since then the meeting with her stuck in my mind. I bumped into her in Sydney at a book launch and she told me about a group of Afghani refugee Women here in Sydney who were known to have amazing embroidery skills. So through numerous phone-calls and research I met the community workers who look after them and we drove way out to the Western suburbs to meet them. That first meeting with them opened a gateway to a very unfamiliar form of creativity, but very exciting.
Coming from a Greek family at least I could relate to them on that cultural level!

parts of her interview are taken from Dazed Digital (enter here to read more)

sources: DazedDigital, The selby