Okay, so some background on me.
My name is Liron Cohen, 38.
Born & raised in Israel and currently living in Ramat Gan.
BA at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Textiles with a focus on weaving.
My graduate collection was titled "Public Space" in which I examined vacant abandoned buildings.
Within the presence of a building there are layers of time, culture and history.
I designed a series of fabrics that examined this phenomena, which was actualized by manipulating the various qualities of the fabric (drape, rigidness, transparency, layering) These have always been aspects that I've been drawn to - surfaces and textures.
"The More the Merrier"
After graduating, I began thinking more in depth about the core of what what drives me, and there is one place that I feel like truly embodies the aesthetics of all that I love - London.
Culturally speaking, fashionably speaking, its vast history in textiles and pioneering of the Arts & Crafts movement; and of course the gloomy gray weather.
Before things were flipped over by the current state of Covid, it was a place I made an effort to visit as often as i could.
London always felt like the right place to see the newest exhibitions and creative movements, and was always fun to just wander around in.
I like going hunting for new materials and inspirations to play with. Perhaps take a workshop in some new embroidery technique - and come home with a suitcases full of new fibers, books and sneakers - and of course, taking many many photos! in 2015 I had a particularly memorable trip in the Shoreditch area.
Plenty of street art, red bricks, and typography.
I took a large series of pics and I picked out my favorites in terms of colors, textures and intrigue.
Through the years and numerous relocations, a fair amount of these images have remained on the big inspiration board in my studio.
When I first began my journey, I tried to think of what objects from everyday life made me excited.
I chose to breakdown pailettes, more commonly known as sequins, I examined how they fragmented light, how they looked like in clusters in all sorts of colors, how they piled on top of each other and how that effected their transparency.
I tried to envision in my head a big blow-up of these sequins - a scattered bunch of them turning into a floor's surface, but this time, as a carpet, and not just a mess left behind by another late-night project.
I had a kind of Koons-like Pop Art moment in imagining taking something out of it's original context and putting it on a pedestal, glorifying the ultimate purpose of the sequin: to be ornamental and fun - but to make it big, and to have that turn any nook in your home into the focal point of enjoyment.
I had quite a long process dissecting and understanding how sequins have the effect that they do, At one point, I had to take a step back to see how I wanted this to work into the world I was creating, and I realized that it wasn't enough for it just to be a larger interpretation of a sequin, and that I required some context to put them in, where I could create a world that was entirely my own.
I had to focus on how I could create a visual language in which the sequin was sometimes more symbolic and representative than literal.
At this point I went back to images from Shortditch, my big inspiration board, and I understood that I needed to organize this visual hoard to truly get something that represented me.
So I got out a new sketchbook and I just went at it, slowly glueing and taping down all my ideas, trying to make order of all the inspiration I had accumulated - creating an aesthetic through collages and "The More the Merrier" methodology - this all brought me to the point I am in now.
Today, I am a small business owner in which every bit of it is something that was made with my hands alone. the brand of one little colorful women.
Stay tuned!
From the design process, the execution, the editing, the promotion and of course the distribution - my goal is to build a beautiful universe in the design world.