Elena's inspiration for the ladies ready-to-wear Fall 2013 collection has came from Coco Chanel designs. Coco Chanel is known as a revolutionary designer who created new standards of pure elegance and beauty in fashion. The fresh looks of this collection are based on some of the ideas of Coco Chanel's designed outfits. For example, the collection emphasizes the constructive lines of a particular item by precisely matching the colours and texture of fabric with a trim/notion that compliment a woman body's proportions. The slimming silhouettes are feminine and define customer's body lines such as Princess A-Line, Empire cut that influenced by 50s, 60s, and 70s. Vertical lines are embellished by the trimming of the designed garments to lengthen a woman's body. Moreover, the all constructive seams visually emphasize curved hips, waist, and bust appearances of wearers.
These garments are made from high quality fabrics such as wool tweed, boucle, rayon, organza, and stretch lace using fine notions and trimmings. The colours of the garments are natural pastels, from white and crème to grey and beige hues. These soft colors are trendy this year, pleasing to the wearer, and create looks of grace, luxury, and elegance. The price range of the clothing pieces varies from $100 CAD to $500 CAD.
The collection was designed based on Elena's target customers researches. They are well - educated professional women in their 30s to 50s who are confident,elegant , and have passion for classic and romantic style. Their sizes range are from 4 to 12. The potential customers follow healthy and active lifestyles , they workout regularly. These clients also are financially stable and prefer to purchase unique pieces of clothing that are well constructed with interesting details such aspleats and pockets. The customers choose the particular outfits that are made from modern and original fabrics. Usually, these customers shop at established boutiques searching for the garments that will express their personal identities.
A few outfits of the collection were designed with asymmetrical elements of construction that express movements and freshness of a particular garment. Moreover, the collection is displaying outfits that are versatile and interchangeable and can be worn daily at a business place of work. These pieces can be easily transformed to the evening look by adding coordinating accessories such as jewelry: pearl necklaces and bracelets with matching long fancy gloves, belts, purses, and hats. The two interchangeable designs are sets of clothing. The one is a ladies suit (the jacket with asymmetrical collar). The second outfit contains flared pants with chiffon blouse and bolero jacket.
The hope is that the collection's spirit enhances the daily mood of potential customers creating confidence, excitement and satisfactions. According to well known Coco Chanel's quote, “A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous”.
“If you can dream it, you can do it.” - Walt Disney
Elena Sanjikhaeva grew up in Siberia, Russia. In childhood, she enjoyed to playing with dolls and made outfits for them. Elena also liked to draw paper dolls with detachable fairy princess dresses. Later she learned basic drawing at a local Children's Art School. In high school Elena took sewing classes to construct basic clothing. It is at that time that she started to making nice outfits for her mother and her friends using commercial patterns. Since then, Elena's sewing skills and creative thinking have been essential and beneficial in many activities of her life.
When Elena immigrated to Canada she was excited to become employed as a costume cutter and sewer at a theatrical company. She would sew new costumes by orders from different theatrical companies across Canada and the USA for shows and productions, and she altered existing outfits in the company's stock according to actors’ measurements. Moreover, Elena carried out custom- made orders of costumes for any occasion and for corporate events.
Last summer, Elena had enrolled in the full-time Fashion Techniques and Design program at George Brown College. She is confident that after successfully graduation next spring Elena will continue fulfilling her childhood dream of designing beautiful clothing and creating harmony and balance in the field of fashion.