Here is Gozde Arig, founder and creative director of Filiarmi exclusively for FOXYLAB NY.
I grew up seeing my father’s drawings and art materials everywhere around our house. Naturally, I was very interested in art and all sorts of creative activities since my childhood. My mother encouraged me as well by letting me draw freely on the walls of our house. Definitely, not all kids are allowed to do that! 🙂 There was a huge coridor wall full of my drawings. My mother owning a textile company also helped me to undertand the fabric materials and the overall business side of it. After my graduation I had an opportunity to visit many well known fashion brands’ headquarters around the world. That was a priceless experience. So when I founded Filiarmi, I just basically put all the pieces together, all my memories and experiences that I obtained from my family.
They are both wery tallented designers and artists. Working with them, I learned the importance of being unique and staying true to yourself, which I also apply in Filiarmi.
Filiarmi is for any woman, who would like to enhance her own beauty with creative, minimal and feminine cocktail dresses.
It was really difficult and tiring. However, I didn’t want to stop or quit for good. I tried to motivate myself by thinking that if we get over it, at the end we will come out way stronger than we were before. And that’s exactly what has happened- what doesn’t kill you does make you stronger! 🙂
In my opinion, genders shouldn’t have specific images to categorise people. A person of any gender may like any style of garment to wear. Thus, anyone, who just simply likes our feminine delicate styles, are welcome to pick one!
I’m inspired mostly by modern art, styles of past decades and women that I see around.
Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay and Barbara Hepworth are some the artists that I adore.
From my point of view, sustainability is a very broad and delicate topic. That’s why there are some many different ways of being more sustainable brand. At the same time it’s impossible to be perfect at everything. Thus, at the moment I, as a Founder of a brand and the brand itself, focus on specific elements, such as: creating well balanced, healthy and self-improving working environment, where team members feel as it’s their second home; making most of by using mainly local fabrics and manufactures; carefully selecting styles and production orders in order to minimise waste and overproduction as much as possible and we also send samples and extra clothes to Turkish Association for the Disabled.
As a brand we are still very young, sort of at an infant’s stage at the moment. We are growing rapidly, discovering something new with every new collection and forming/mastering our identity. Last year we started to work with K&H Communications, PR and Showroom, what helps us grow and build strong relationships with top influencers/VIPs we look forward to our first Press Breakfast Event, which is going to happen in London just after the Paris Show [this interview was recorded previous to that event, which indeed took place in London and has a great success]. Shortly saying- the sky is the limit and we are very optimistic about the future.
