MILAN, Nov 1, 2010 / — One of the designers who answered the first Creative Call of What’s More Alive Than You (WMATY), Victoria Louise Geaney has been chosen to be one of the 15 authors wherein their works will be realized by this unique fashion cooperative.

A London native, 23-year-old Victoria geaney created a pair of shoes that was inspired by the Queen of England and thus aptly entitled it “h.r.h by victoria geaney.” It is currently in production and will be part of the permanent collection of WMATY.

Below is a transcript of an interview with Victoria Geaney:

Interviewer: Please tell us about yourself and what you are looking for

Victoria Geaney: My name is Victoria Geaney and I am an upcoming, young British designer working and living near London. I am a conceptual womenswear fashion designer, mainly specializing in innovative tailoring and shirt-making.

With every piece I create, I am continually questioning and challenging archaic conventions governing the making of garments. I then purposely break or twist these rules in order to create thoughtful, exciting and theoretical clothes focusing on deconstruction and intelligent pattern construction.

I view myself as a multi-disciplarian – simultaneously working as a practitioner of fashion design and art, which is initially the belief that led me to enter the WMATY competition, as we have a shared philosophy that designs can function both as pieces of fashion and also as artworks.

Interviewer: What about your education and your cultural context?

Victoria Geaney: I studied fashion at Epsom, gaining a 1st Class Honors in June 2010. Prior to that, I studied Art Foundation at Buckinghamshire and Chilterns University and College, and specialising in fashion and textiles.

My influences are contradictory in order to balance my designs. I am inspired as much by the city as by the country and my local environment.

Currently, I live and work near London, and gain a lot of inspiration from trips to art galleries and from my travels around the city. However, I also am continually inspired by natural forms within the local environment, particularly the flowers and roses in my garden in Buckinghamshire.

It was these roses which led to my development of the digital prints that make up the designs of my shoes for WMATY.”

Interviewer: Which kind of perspective would you give to fashion?

Victoria Geaney: The transition from post modernity into the green era continues to be a large influence on fashion, with nature and the environment being promulgated through the media as the new ideology.

Green and environmental issues are at the forefront of world politics. I have designed this miniature collection of shoes which I see as potential icons of the green era of fashion and politics, merging wearability with environmental textile design to create iconic floral pieces of art for ladies’ feet.

This societal shift towards green and the environment can be seen to have influenced both the print – the beautiful tones and shapes of flowers and roses which grow and blossom just outside my window – and the materials used for the shoes, which is Italian organic cotton!

Interviewer: What do you think about the chance given by WMATY which allows you to turn your background into a career designing accessories?

Victoria Geaney: I think that WMATY is such a fantastic, amazing and unique opportunity to have my designs turned into a reality, and a dream that i would never have dared to have dreamt so early on in my fashion career.

I am so proud and excited to be a part of it and particularly to have been chosen as one of the finalists of the first ever creative call. When I received the email to say that i had been chosen as a finalist, I was just so extremely excited and couldn’t really believe that my shoe collection had been chosen for production!

It feels incredible that my shoe designs will be available to buy online from www.wmaty.com from December under my design name- Victoria Louise Geaney, as at this fledgling stage in my fashion design career I wouldn’t have had the resources or opportunities available to be able to design and manufacture under my own brand name.

Interviewer: What do you think of the brand name, “What’s More Alive Than You™”? Do you think this brand name could reflect a contemporary idea of fashion?

Victoria Geaney: I think that the brand “What’s More Alive than You” perfectly reflects the contemporary idea of fashion, as nowadays people are expressing themselves much more through their own individual fashions and styles rather than by simply following predicted trends.

It is much more personal. there is nothing more alive and flourishing than today’s fashion industry, which can be viewed as much at the shows in Milan, London, Paris and New York as on the streets of every country and city in the world.

As Chanel said “fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”

Interviewer: Any advice to those who wants to join WMATY Creative Calls?

Victoria Geaney: I would really encourage other young designers to join the WMATY creative calls as the competition allows practitioners from all over the world with a shared passion for design, whatever their background, to create a global design community producing a varied and exciting new collection of accessories and artworks.

The bags, shoes and artworks shown in the first creative call are a testament to all of the hard work and creativity of the international designers, as well as the massive belief and time undertaken by the WMATY team to realise such a huge and unique project.