Kalissi AW19 interview - Fashion Scout
I interviewed Christina Maria Hardlicka, the designer behind the Austrian brand Kalissi before her Fashion Scout debut in February 2019. Read below.
Christina Maria Hardlicka, the designer behind the Austrian brand Kalissi, understands the strain placed on busy women to be more than one type of woman at once – simultaneously required to be sophisticated, in charge, busy, yet approachable and sociable. It’s a lot of pressure to place on one individual, a pressure Christina feels can be solved by the clothing she creates.
With her AW19 collection, ‘Roial’, Christina wants to “play with contemporary, bold shapes combined with the ruffles and pearls of 19th century Austria” as a tribute to both the Austrian Empress Sisi (a young woman married into the House of Habsburg at just sixteen years old) and the modern woman who needs to be multiple versions of herself at the same time.
“I decided to focus more on pastel pink tones for this collection” to compliment the delicate shapes inspired by Sisi’s era. Juxtapositions are rife within this collection: bright yet muted tones; bold yet wearable shapes; comfortable whilst sophisticated.
Ready to wear and haute couture are blended together in designs which reflect the mutability of women’s lives today. “It comes from a personal struggle of wanting to be casually dressed, but wanting to look sophisticated at the same time,” she says. She understands that busy women want to be “relaxed, but on a more elevated level” and aims to bring the “ease of dressing back to women” by creating clothing that can cover both day and night.
Christina has a strong understanding of how materials work, thanks to her education – she graduated from the University for Applied Arts Vienna — having studied textiles, graphic design and photography. She puts her love of bold colours down to her graphic design studies, saying it taught her which colours go together but, perhaps most interestingly, she learnt which colours don’t go together – combinations she believes make any outfit “immediately more interesting”. This innate ability to bring contrasting combinations together, however, often gets Christina in trouble with her manufacturers. “They’ll sometimes tell me it’s not possible to make something, but for me everything is possible because I haven’t been taught limitations,” she says. “I will always say ‘we will make it work!’”
She describes herself as a “package person” – whilst her collection is inspired by eras that are centuries apart, her conceptualisation of the collection was a very straightforward process. She always sees a full outfit in her mind, meaning she doesn’t need the help of a stylist, and making the act of shopping as easy as possible for her customer. Her customer is a busy woman, so Kalissi provides full outfits that are ready to wear, “removing the need to find matching items elsewhere,” says Christina.
The brand provides a full package – not only is Christina selling a conceptualised moment in history, she is selling a story. This story is perhaps the most timeless of all, that of a woman’s desire to look and feel like royalty in their every-day life. “This is why the collection is titled Roial,” said Christina, “The old-fashioned spelling means ‘nobility’ whilst playing tribute to a previous era. It encapsulates how we all want to look noble and elegant as women, but in a fun way. I just want women to be inspired to have fun in their choices of wardrobe and be daring. I want them to be all the things they want to be.”