Ivo Nikkolo meets Riga

Tervist, y'all!

Have you noticed some new stores in Riga lately? Yes, I know that many are bankrupted now, but luckily there are some brave entrepreneurs who are willing to take a risk and make our scant shopping range better. This time that brave man are from Estonia. Yeah, right! From that small country on which's people we make fun of. Ivo Nikkolo is one of the first Estonian designers, who has actually created a brand and a store chain, which is far beyond it's origin country - Russian, Latvia, Finland and Lithuania. Now Ivo Nikkolo is owned by Baltika Group, an Estonian fashion holding which has such brands as Monton, Mosaic and Baltman.

Ivo Nikkolo AW 2010

Today brand's creative director is Xenia Joost, a young and determined Estonian designer, who dreamt of working at Ivo Nikkolo since her childhood. You see - when a person has a dream of becoming a designer and a strong personality multiplied by hard work and stamina-full motivation, there's no wonder, that one day he or she will graduate Art Academy in fashion design, win few contest and get invited to Vivienne Westwood for an internship and then hired by a big fashion company. And that kind of a person is Xenia Joost. 

Xenia Joost wears her own designs 

Today we attended Ivo Nikkolo workshop lead by Xenia Joost, where she explained fashion production chain and how ideas are getting processed not only by designers and māksla, but also analysts and consultants, resulting in garments and ad campaign. Honestly there was nothing new for me, as all of my academical works and thesises were focused around that topic, but it was really nice to refresh it and hear some new examples. 

"Questions, anyone?!"

After small intro of fashion business, Xenia Joost offered us to play in fashion researchers and look trough magazines,cut out some pictures and paste it on a A1 paper. Unfortunately available magazines were not that inspiring... Girl almost refused to do that, I was looking for some denim pieces, but two other ladies from our "team" where obsessed with "pretty" pictures and cosmetics ads... And eventually they used non of our choices...Whatsoever, It was really interesting meeting Xenia Joost and our new friend Am who is actually a prospective fashion designer. He found this workshop very annoying as he did the same this 20 million times. Luckily he had his BlackBerry...

Our new friend A.

Well, now is fun part...Remember our fun quiz -> Here, so that white thing according to S'n'S is a family portrait. Don't ask why - it's simply is... So there are 6 people, who has answered correctly. Please post your names in comments bellow, and we'll pick randomly the winner.

Well, I'm tired and have to gain some power for coming up weekend - my best friend V has a birthday, my other best friend D is coming soon to visit us, Girl and I are giving a lecture about fashion blogging and plus Museum Night....

See you soon

-BOY