Vicken Derderian highlights "Women In Flight" collection in Los Angeles

Los Angeles – At Hubble Studios in downtown Los Angeles, Vicken Derderian made his second appearance as an emerging designer this season. Presenting his Fall 2017 collection, the designer along with his partner, Kyung Hwa Kim, showed off a subtle, chic line of sophisticated woven and knit pieces for LAFW.

Bringing together an essence of comfort along with unique, asymmetrical designs; the collection came off as effortless and edgy. The line featured a color palette of earthy tones including shades of beige, off-white creams, deep purple, charcoal gray and more. With draping silhouettes and oversized cropped knits as a central design theme, the show played with various contemporary elements. Illustrating women empowerment with this collection, Derderian chatted with FashionUnited explaining a little more on the inspiration behind his pieces.

As this is your third collection, what was your main theme for your AW 2017 collection?

As far as a central theme, it was about women in flight [highlighting] empowerment, confidence, movement and texture.

What inspired you for this particular collection?

Women in flight. In other words, [women] breaking that glass ceiling or moving up and or women empowerment. Women in flight [means] pushing up against that glass ceiling until it really breaks—that’s a big part of it. I mean after the elections, I felt that [the Vicken Derderian woman] became kind of a flightless bird, but she adapts, she maneuvers and she gets where she needs to go. That’s the key thing in all of this.

Where did you first launch the line?

We first launched this line in L.A., and we’ve been in L.A. ever since. My partner in crime, Kyung Hwa Kim, brings a lot of the handwork and all of the knits as well as some of the woven [pieces]. We’ve worked together fairly well; basically we balance each other out. She does knits, and we both kind of play we both [aspects] of designing. At first we give each other enough space to do whatever we want to do and then we mesh it all together at the end.

What is the current price range for the collection?

The collection ranges from 1200-1500 dollars and up. [The pieces] are all handmade and high quality fabrics.

Was this your first time showing at LAFW? How did you feel about it?

This is our second time showing at LAFW. We like working with them. They’ve been really good to us, and really supportive and organized.

What do you have planned for the future with this line?

We’re hopefully doing another collection for next season, then we’ll start marketing it and really get it into the stores. Then we’ll start moving sales and just move forward with that.

For the this fall collection, what is your ideal target customer?

We’re trying for the higher luxury market, again because the clothes are literally crafted and its done by us directly. I do a lot of the patternmaking and the knits are done by her. The pieces are not given to someone else or a factory—we’re crafting the clothes. It’s a bit of old world craft mixed with a bit of the new world technology.

Photos: FashionUnited