Roksanda Ilincic on Designing for Different Shapes & Being Business-Savvy

Serbian-born, London-based fashion designer Roksanda Ilincic, who shows her collections at London Fashion Week, has opened up on her design process. She reveals that when she first started out as a designer, she was mainly designing with her own figure in mind, but now she sees that she needs to think about what also suits other women and various other shapes. She does her best to see what the customer is interested in during the creation process now:

“I must say that when I started I perhaps made more pieces that suited my own body shape. Well those days are gone. When you start to think in a business sense, you realise you need to think about other women and their body shapes. I’m a designer who really follows what my buyers and customers are saying about what they need. What we share is the same idea of an aesthetic and independence and strength.”

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Roksanda admits it can be difficult coming from college in to the business world because you don’t always think with business sense which she believes is equally as important as creativity when it comes to being a success. She explained that designers do need to know about business:

“It’s interesting, when you are this fresh fashion graduate, just out of college, business is the last thing on your mind and something that you don’t find inspiring. It’s more like a necessity. But now I see it as just as important as design. If you don’t have business success, then what you are doing is more of a personal indulgence, you’re creating things for a niche circle of people surrounding you. When you become more business-savvy, you take your work to completely different levels. It’s just as important to me now as being creative and pushing the boundaries of fashion.”