"We" means Nino Liparteliani and Maka Tabatadze.

Nino is an architect and Maka – a theatre and cinema designer. To be more precise, this is what they used to be. Today, however, they are involved in something utterly different. What they are doing is very modern and extremely important, something that is still unusual and quite difficult for us, but what will eventually help and save us. We are talking about business.

When the two young girls from Tbilisi decided that it would be better to launch an "enterprise" of their own, instead of wasting time pointlessly, sitting with their friends and complaining. But the question was: what kind of business? It should be something beautiful and pleasant.  The answer?  Making fashionable clothes, of course.

The girls have known each other since childhood, but it was a year ago that this story began.

 "This idea occurred to both of us, to Maka and me, at one of our friend’s birthday party. We brought sewing machines from our homes and started to make clothes.
 Then, we rented an apartment on Pavlov Street and immediately filled it up with fabric, threads and all kinds of things. There was no room left to walk around. At first, we only made clothes for friends."

"Did you charge them a lot?"

"No, we didn’t."

"Then, did you give them as presents?"

"No, we did charge a price for the clothes we made, but to tell you the truth, it was rather our friends who made gifts for us by buying them. Then our friends brought their friends along and we realized that the time had come for us to expand, so we moved to this place. It was also our friends who helped us to find it. It had never occurred to me that we could find a room on Rustaveli (32, Rustaveli Avenue). Eventually, we want this place to look like a salon. One generous person presented sewing machines to us. We moved everything here: threads, fabric, accessories and all the things that we had.

Our main sponsors are also friends. From the beginning, everybody forgave us for our early mistakes. They used to say, "Oh, what gifted girls they are! But they have a poor dress-maker."  They were tolerant in that respect, because the level of our performance was really funny. The sketches of our models were good, but then, after they were tailored to an actual figure, something went wrong.

In short, we didn’t have a dress-maker. Maka and I sat and cried bitterly – how can we help it? What can we do about it? Then our friend, Ksiusha, came and told us she would help us out. She took us to her Aunt Tsiuri’s house. So, now we’ve got Aunt Tsiuri and…

When we moved to this place, we had just started working on a new collection. Since June, we have our own manager, Marika Zhgenti. She told us: "You girls are sitting quietly hiding over here and no one knows anything about you. Go out, get exposed to the public and let’s tell people of your existence. In sum, the idea was hers and she  helped us to raise the money. Marika is the "Imedi L" manager. She’s sort of combining jobs: working with us on a part-time basis. It was her company, "Imedi L", that became our first sponsor.

The exhibition is going to be a commercial event, which means that the collection will be sold. Therefore, the clothes should be more practical and easy to wear. They should be designed so that one would be able to wear them, not only on the podium, but in everyday life as well. So, we did our best to make them beautiful and comfortable to wear. At the show, our friends will model the collection.  We won’t be able to hire or invite top models yet.

What we really need is advertising. We have neither a "light box", nor anything else. Nevertheless, we don’t stop working.

How do people find us? Someone recommends us and one person brings another along with him. Our work brings us orders. The better the order turns out to be, and the more satisfied we are, the more orders we receive.

That way or another, we support ourselves and keep our business going.

We’re eager to make a show. We would be delighted to create a cheerful collection for a New Year’s show. Currently, we’re preparing New Year’s costumes, but only for those who have given us orders.

Where do we get information from? Well, from many sources: magazines, Fashion TV… The most important thing is intuition and the sense of trends in fashion. It has also happened that we made something that we saw in a magazine later. If someone comes from London or Paris, we ask them to tell us what’s going on there.
It seems that all cities have colours of their own…

What about Tbilisi? Black is Tbilisi’s colour. Everyone knows it. Besides anything else, you wear black here simply to avoid getting your clothes dirty. For instance, you certainly wouldn’t be able to wear this coat (she’s pointing to a light-green coat) everyday in the town."

Maka recalls, "My mother used to make clothes for me and, by the way, I was much better dressed then. Later I also tried to sew something for myself. Nino made clothes as well. We made clothes for each other.  For as long as I can remember,  I have never worn ready-made clothes. I’ve always preferred to wear hand-sewn clothes because they were original and more cut standing. That’s probably why people come to us."

Nino adds, "Personally, I rarely made clothes myself, I used to have clothes made for me. To be honest, I was just entertaining myself with it… Now the process is different. We make sketches, and Aunt Tsiuri makes clothes.  We make the fabric ourselves. We buy simple material, then we paint it, draw on it and render it absolutely different. Its structure is completely changed."

"Doesn’t all this require special knowledge? For example,  how do you make sure that the paint doesn’t get washed away by the rain?"

"Of course, we need to study everything fundamentally.  We also weave some fabric ourselves. Maybe that’s why our creations are so valuable to us. When you make something entirely on your own, you become much more fond of the result. The embroidered fabric is also made by us. Aunt Tsiuri taught how to embroider. We’re extremely lucky that we met Aunt Tsiuri. In addition to many other things, she’s a wonderful teacher. In reality, you tend to learn everything during the working process, when you hear the sound of the scissors …"

Aunt Tsiuri’s full name is Tsiuri Chokheli and she is "a painter, a designer and a wonderful person".

Tsiuri Chokheli explained, "When the girls came to me, I immediately felt close to them. I love working with young people. Whenever they come to ask for my help, I am always happy to give them a hand. Getting prepared for a show is always a pleasure, since I love to work with young designers.

It was a great pleasure to work with Nino Chubinishvili, a very talented artist and an extraordinary person. Now, I am fully involved here and I am immensely happy both with the work and the human relationships. We work together. The girls bring their sketches, and then I use those to make the drawings after that. Then I suggest which fabric is better to use. We discuss every line."

Maka asserted,  "It is much more difficult to make clothes for men. They pay attention to utterly different things. Once, when we were making a suit for one young man, he went walking around the whole salon holding a match and a thread, asking everyone if the fabric was really wool or not. Men think about quality, whereas women are more concerned about the appearance. When they look at the garment, it must appeal to them. They’ll never ask whether it’s acrylic or kapron."

"And yourself, what do you wear?"

"I don’t know. I want to wear everything here. But…"

"But still, you’re dressed very differently."

"Yes, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Something’s happening. I also often think to myself why this is happening. I really don’t know. Perhaps one gets tired of all this.  For instance, my friends and relatives kept scolding me because, when making something, I used to piece tiny bits together and was on a permanent quest for something new all the time…"

"And now?"

"Whatever I was looking for, is hanging here now.  We’re terribly busy, we have always got loads of work to do. In the morning, I put on something quickly, rush here and start working. But one thing is true, when we wear the clothes that we’ve made ourselves, for some reason the clients like them much more than when they see them on the hangers.

As I’ve told you, something’s happening… A colleague of ours was planning to go to Moscow on Iudashkin’s invitation. She was taking twenty outfits for the show. She couldn’t find anything suitable for her to wear. She called her friends, asking for their help and told them she had nothing to wear. Everyone brought something they kept for a special occasion. After all that, she went, wearing jeans and a simple shirt.  Iudashkin was meeting his guests at the airport. There were many designers arriving from the entire Caucasus. When he saw our friend getting off the plane, he said: "A real couturiere has arrived."  That says it all."

We continue to talk, their friends are trying the dresses on from Nino and Maka’s new collection to demonstrate them for us. We became so involved that we start shooting our own ideas. Creative art is contagious, and so is the fascinating and unique process of an incessant search of something new.

MAMUKA DEVIDZE