Restructuring and Rewriting with Ionut Razvan

Photography credits to: Ramona Murgu, Lucian Stefanescu, Raluca Ciornea and Aron Sampaleanu.

Styling by Alberto Duse.

In the hectic build up to SS27, Ionut Razvan to the time away from the pattern cutting table to speak to us about his eponymous fashion label, and the journey to land his first show at Bucharest Fashion Week, dress the one and only Coco Rocha, and make sure that every garment tells a story.

It sounds like he stepped straight into success, winning the Fashion Department Prize for Best Collection in 2023, then being features in the Fresh Blood runway at Bucharest fashion week, and now preparing for his upcoming show. But ‘making it’ in fashion is never a simple journey.

“Showing at Bucharest Fashion Week was something I really wanted and had been looking forward to for a long time. It was one of those moments that I had imagined many times, so actually seeing my collection on the runway felt quite surreal.

There was a lot of excitement, but also a huge amount of emotion because I put so much of myself into the collection. You spend months developing something, questioning every detail and wondering how people will respond to it, and then suddenly you have those few minutes when everything comes together. Seeing the pieces worn by the models, the atmosphere, the music and the audience made it feel very real. It was definitely a moment I will remember for a long time.”

His LFW debut put a spin on several parts of the design process, as he merged recognisable tailored details like shirt collars and ties with surreal shapes and feminine silhouettes, often using states of monochrome to create a surreal garment that looks like it grows and forms of its own accord. Entitled ‘The Shirt You Left Me’ the emotional pull of the collection unbuttoned feelings of morphing, attaching to new memories, and watching them change over time.

“The latest collection is very much about transformation and tension between different states. I’m interested in the idea of clothing being caught somewhere between something familiar and something slightly strange.

I like taking recognisable elements from menswear and womenswear and disrupting them, changing their proportions, cutting them apart and putting them back together in a different way. There is a constant dialogue between structure and something much more fluid and instinctive.

I think there is also something quite personal in the collection. I’m interested in the way clothes can hold memories, attitudes and even contradictions. Rather than telling one very literal story, I wanted the collection to feel like a world that the wearer completes.”

Looking back at earlier collections, including the emotional collection he created for his final year at university “Nobody Finds Me Attractive”, there has been a consisted thread of deconstruction and reconstruction to explore human emotions through creation. Building with unconventional shapes and materials to create feelings that we all recognise.

“Deconstruction has always felt very natural to me. I’m usually more interested in what happens when you take something apart than when you simply try to make it perfect from the beginning.

I like looking at a garment almost as a construction rather than as a finished object, where the seams are, what happens if you move them, what happens if you reverse something, leave something unfinished or give a completely different function to a familiar element.

I also like working with materials that are not necessarily considered “fashion materials”. Sometimes a material suggests the shape itself. I don’t always start with a very fixed idea of what a garment should look like; sometimes the material, its weight, stiffness or behaviour dictates where the design goes.

For me, the imperfections and unexpected solutions are often what make a piece feel alive.”

Bucharest Fashion Week is one of many new moments on the fashion calendar, popping up outside of the big 4. Growing up and learning that design was his calling Ionut found himself in the quickly growing Romanian fashion scene.

“I think Bucharest is going through a really interesting moment creatively. There is a younger generation of designers, artists, photographers, stylists and other creatives who are creating their own spaces and their own ways of working, rather than waiting for an established industry to tell them what is relevant.

The fashion scene is still relatively small compared to the major European fashion capitals, and that can obviously be challenging, especially when it comes to resources, production and international exposure. But at the same time, being part of a smaller scene gives you a certain freedom. There is room to experiment and to develop a personal identity.

Bucharest has a very particular energy, it can be chaotic, raw and contradictory, but that is also what makes it interesting creatively. I think the fact that Bucharest Fashion Week has grown in the last few years has helped put more attention on what is happening here and has created a platform for designers to be seen outside Romania as well.

I wouldn’t say the scene has completely “blown up” yet, but I definitely think something is happening here. And I’m excited to be part of that moment.”

And what else excites him, and inspires his design?

“I’m influenced by a lot of things that aren’t necessarily fashion. Architecture, music, photography, films, people, subcultures and even the way people dress on the street.

I’m especially attracted to things that have a certain tension to them, something that is beautiful but slightly uncomfortable, masculine but vulnerable, polished but somehow broken.

I think I’m also influenced by everyday objects and garments that we normally don’t question. A shirt, a tie, a suit, a uniform, things that have very strong cultural meanings. I like taking these familiar codes and seeing how far I can push them before they become something else.”

On the sneak preview in his Instagram stories we see SS27 coming to life for its October launch, between wilting lilies, swathes of draped fabric and peeks of white feathered masks, ‘The Last Seven Minutes’ is due to delve deeper into memories, longing and the cracks of pain that can break into the most beautiful of moments.