The Poet Within The Fashion Designer
By Monika Kochhar

Afshin Feiz [left] was born in Iran, lives in Paris, travels all over the world, and shows his collections in New York. Add to the multiculturalism of his outlook, apprenticeships with leading fashion designers like John Galliano and a great passion for music and poetry, and you have the makings of a wonderful fashion designer. Inspired by the poetry of the Sufi poet Rumi, Feiz used delicate and tender designs in pastel colors and luxurious silks for his summer collection, reminiscent of the longing for the beloved in Rumi's verses. His Fall 2005 collection, entitled ‘Butterfly Catcher’ was filled with symbols of butterflies and candles, which in Rumi's poetry represent love and longing; in Urdu and Hindi poetry, the ever elusive and fatal love between the moth and the flame symbolizes the same relationship between ecstasy and pain.

How have you assimilated the different cultures you've encuontered in your numerous travels in your work?
I'm a designer so I'm like a sponge. I take in all sorts of pertinent and also seemingly useless (at the time) information constantly from my surroundings, and it all surfaces at one moment or another in my work and in my way of seeing design in general. Each country has its own aesthetic. Obviously there's the cultural angle but also more simply, on a basic level, it's a matter of lifestyles and the need for different types of clothes that accomodate those lifestyles. For example, despite the image, the French do not have that many occasions for dressing up in long evening dresses. That is something that is better suited to Americans. In New York there are women who have a dressy function every weekend.

You studied French literature in the U.S. before moving to Paris to study fashion.
Time Out Magazine called me "The Poet." Maybe my literature background influences my design philosophy. Hence my first collection was influenced by the Persian poet Rumi whose references to butterflies and candles are synonymous to lovers and their beloved.

I use the image of butterflies as a symbol for love and I break it own to using details such as butterfly wings as inspiration for my designs, and the global references to love as the larger spirit for my collection as a whole.

	Afshin Feiz Website

What other influences have affected your work?
Music is a strong and direct part of my designing. The music I choose for my shows is very much part of the whole image that I'm trying to convey. It's not there just to have a nice beat for the models to talk to. In that end, for my New York Show in February, ex LA music producer, (for bands such as Elvis Costello, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Alanis Morrisette), Jimmy Boyle, who is now frontman for a new amazing band called ENDLESS wrote and sang a song for me. It was entitled, the Butterfly Catcher, the same as my collection and the words and the melody were an exact musical version of my message in my collection. I almost cried when I first heard it. Jimmy is a huge talent!!

The catalogue for my first collection was shot by my friend, rockstar Bryan Adams and the drawing for my February show invitation was a collaboration between me and legendary Psychedelic Furs frontman, Richard Butler both of whom I adore!! So music and music people are very inspirational for me.

These days, some of the runway designs are so outlandish, it's doubtful whether some of them are even wearable.
All my designs serve a purpose. I am not one of those designers that designs extreme clothes in order to get the press. It is much easier to design clothing that seems overly creative and unwearable than to design real clothes for real people that have that little something that makes them stand apart.

What do you think are the key differences between eveningwear and daywear? Sportswear?
Daywear is about comfort but there is no reason why it cannot still have that special something that sets it apart from everyone else. With evening clothes, it is easier to be a little more daring and sexy.

Sports...hmmm....I know I'll get crucified for saying this but sportswear is for sports or for men. My daywear is always chic even if it has a sportswear element to it. I like women who dress up. You can be comfortable and dressed up. I don't really understand the term sportswear.

Designers often work with a range of materials and colors to represent varying themes and ideas.
Of course, my materials differ for different moods and themes and moments in time. However, I always work with very luxurious fabrics almost entirely from Italy, silks, silk chiffons, virgin wools, dévorés, and jacquards.

My colour palette evolves season to season depending on my mood, the feeling in the air and the theme I've chosen for my collection. I am naturally drawn to pastel colours though and light pink tends to be a fetish colour for me.

You mentioned that the 13th century Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi influenced your current collection.
The theme of love is something that inspires my work - in my designs, in painting, in music etc. I like the following poem by Rumi, for example:

In your light I learn how to love
In your beauty, how to make poems
You dance inside my chest
where no-one sees you
but sometimes I do
and that sight becomes this art.

In particular, the line "and that sight becomes this art" means that exposing himself to the feeling of love inspires the lover to express it creatively whether through poems, designing clothes, singing, painting or anything else.