For the latest instalment in our One Look film series, we celebrate the Greek couturier Celia Kritharioti.
VISIONAIRE founder James Kaliardos says, “Celia’s obsession with the details of the feminine, meticulously designed into her couture clothing, is both nostalgic and futuristic.
She is like Greek Royalty! We met in Athens at her home near the Acropolis and after experiencing her family and chic surroundings I knew I had to make this film. She is expanding the global reach of couture. The couture house where Celia creates was established in 1906 and the business has remained in her family across generations. Celia grew up surrounded by seamstresses and visiting the Paris Couture with her mother, so her understanding of design has been nurtured since those early childhood years. This French experience and her own classic Greek beauty and heritage is what I love about her clothing.”
Landon Peoples of Refinery 29 writes, “It’s not often a designer passes their house down to a family member. In fact, in fashion, there’s no real line of succession when it comes to who inherits what (apart from the Versace family, of course). But in Grecian designer Celia Kritharioti’s case, she was the perfect woman for the job. Founded in 1906, the couturier became the new creative director of Greece’s oldest fashion house. She’s since taken the Kritharioti name mainstream, carrying the family’s couture traditions with her, and designed for the ballet and opera, and most recently, shown couture in Paris at The Ritz. It’s why Vanity Fair named her a couturier to watch, and why celebrities can’t get enough.
At the couture level, though, what really goes into making those garments that, more than any other type of runway creation, take hundreds of hours to create? Well, thanks to Visionaire co-founders Cecilia Dean and James Kaliardos and filmmaker Ahmed Ibrahim, we get to see Kritharioti up close and personal, putting the finishing touches on what was one of the must-see shows during Paris couture. Filmed during the moments leading up to her Ritz spectacle, Kritharioti takes viewers inside her world that includes an array of seamstresses sewing just about everything by hand, a few models (including Lais Ribeiro), and some pretty heavy machinery.
“I grew up in this couture house,” Kritharioti says in the clip. “When I was a child and coming here with my mother, and going to all of the haute couture houses at the défiles that they were making in the house, and it was fantastic. I love Paris.” While couture may not be the most accessible, in terms of style and price, it is the most beautiful type of fashion there is — and, probably the last part of the industry that can’t be made in a flash and captured on an iPhone. And, in One Look: The Flower, it’s a type of insider, zoomed-in look at the magic of haute couture that you can’t get elsewhere — unless you were a fly on the wall, of course.”
Check out the film here or on our film page.