It was love at first sight when we first laid eyes on Dutch fashion designer Ilja Visser SS16 collection. Innovative and beautiful, the School of Arts in Arnhem graduate, who launched her first namesake couture line, ILJA, in 2005, definitely out did herself.
We must admit, we do find ourselves respecting the designer’s conceptual vision and artistic approach to fashion. With her collection, named ‘ASSIMILA’, she manged to successfully show the audience how one can have the ability to adapt to change whilst interacting and absorbing new elements.
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The Assimila collection was in collaboration with Marina Toeters of by-wire.net. Together they came up with the stand out feature which used technology to create special light effects. The end product was the casting of living colors on several of the runway looks. The special effects resembled the biological processes of color change in response to emotions.
On the collection Visser shared, “ILJA is a compliment to contemporary women. We are professionals, wives, mothers, friends, gifted with talents and dreams to accomplish, and all that in the midst of a storm of hormones and a world that, at times, seems full of madness. I want women to be unapologetic, acting on their strength, and comfortable with their own beauty.”