THE FUTURE OF FASHION
Combining her roots in Belarus with her new life in Ireland has set Ala Sinkevich on the road to a glittering career as she graduates from NCAD
WE are all nomads in the sense that we travel, we explore the world, we layer meaning and memories,’ young designer Ala Sinkevich told me. We caught up after the announcement of the NCAD Brown Thomas Designer to Watch bursary earlier this week. Sinkevich chatted to me over afternoon tea in The Merrion Hotel, talking fondly of her home town in Belarus and of her desire to create a collection that was deep and meaningful which would represent her identity.
It was a sentiment that threaded throughout the collections, according to head of fashion at NCAD Angela Kelly who mentioned that all the students had dug deep this year — looking back to their heritage and childhoods for inspiration.
Sinkevich called her collection Existential Nomad, basing it on the principle of Matryoshka nesting dolls and objects within objects — the idea that clothes are interchangeable and can be worn in many different ways. For her graduate collection, she translated this idea through a series of hand-felted dome coats, designed in Merino wool and worn over the head, along with reversible wrap jackets, and a hand quilted linen kaftan with wool wadding and a wrapped cloth slip dress that she hand-dyed with linen gauze.
‘I’m really interested in the idea of hiding, well, you know, in design terms layering something’, Sinkevich says. ‘The inner layer came from the idea of swaddling a person so they would be comfortable. The whole collection can be worn in so different ways different because of the fabric.’
Sustainability and a socially-conscious
design was key to all the collections to reflect NCAD’s ethos
‘Most of the linen sourced from Bela rus and then I mixed with some Irish linen,’ says Sinkevich. ‘The wool cam from South Africa but all the fabrics are sustainable.’
Rooted in ancient multicultural history and crafted with contemporary sustainable material, the collection is, in many ways, a collision of two worlds. But Sinkevich’s main aim was to make her designs timeless.
‘I didn’t any of it to conform to trends,’
she says. ‘I wanted to make clothes that could be functional and still wearable in 20 years.’
Born in the Ukraine and schooled in Belarus before moving to Ireland five years ago, Sinkevich tells me NCAD wasn’t part of the plan but more of an ambitious dream of hers.
‘I’ve always made clothes, but I never thought I could make a career out of it,’ she says. ‘I’m so grateful to the all the lecturers at NCAD because it really has been the most amazing learning process. I can’t believe how far I have come. I will miss everyone a lot. We are all great friends.’
Brown Thomas Creative Director Shelly Corkery, who awarded the bursary, said attention to detail was one of the impressive things about Sinkevich’s winning collection and the designer’s detail aesthetic had impressed her beyond belief.
‘The layering is so clever,’ Shelly told me. ‘Those asymmetrical dresses — so pretty and feminine and yet you really had to dig deep in to see all the detail and stitching.’