Bellavance: Women's clothing with the spirit of New York

IN THE WEEKLY RUBRIC "NEW MARK" Wonderzine presents young designers and tells where and how you can buy their things. Our heroes this week are young designers Nolan Bellawans and Ava Hama, who launched their own brand of clothing in New York.

Canadian Nolan Bellawans, who had been living without television for 16 years and had been training his imagination all this time, and Ava Hama, the granddaughter of the author of the Marvel comics, met in Parsons: he liked her shoes and he sat next to her. In 2013, their debut collection was shown. It turned out so successful that it didn’t just take the Peroni Young Designer Award, but was completely bought by the Opening Ceremony store on exclusive rights. For a young brand, just stepping on the New York fashion scene, this was a great start. Now Nolan and Ava release under the name Bellavance one collection per season, shoot campaigns and lookbooks, make plans to launch a line of shoes. According to the designers, the foundation of their collections is the style of classic American sportswear, but in the geometric forms of these things one can also see the greetings of New York urbanism, and modern art, and the image of the three sisters - for example, all the items of the summer collection are connected in three ways.

It should be noted that Bellavance is not just another ordinary brand with a concise design. In the fall, young designers have come up with asymmetrical pleated dresses and minimalist woolen suits of free cut, printed tennis dresses with deep cuts on the back, cropped tops and denim coats. Bellavance has only one visible drawback - overpriced: $ 625 for a silk skirt or $ 525 for woolen trousers. But this is generally characteristic of many young brands (someday we will talk about this separately). In the meantime, their stuff is praised by WWD, The Cut and The New York Times, style.com reviews their collections, Opening Ceremony continues to make purchases, and local glossy publications do not miss the opportunity to write about them. If everything goes at such a pace further, then in the upcoming seasons we will hear about them more than once, and after a while their things will begin to flicker regularly in the wardrobes of our heroes.

Ava: I can not say that I once decided for myself that I want to be a designer. Rather, it was the realization that design is the only thing I can devote most of my life to. If we talk about the style on which the entire aesthetics of Bellavance is built, then this is a traditional American sportswear. But, of course, with each new collection we are trying to expand our horizons: we use new materials, we experiment with cutting and sewing techniques. What I really like about the fashion industry is that the industry itself is becoming more democratic. For example, today everyone has the opportunity to watch any fashion show online.

Nolan: Initially, I studied at the Faculty of Journalism, but in time I realized that this story is not about me. Then I decided to do something that always attracted me, but it was alarming in its complexity - design. As part of the Bellavance project, for me now there is only one main task - to expand the horizons in production. I want to introduce more innovative materials. It’s hard to say that I may not like something categorically in the fashion industry. But as a young designer, I would like to point out that it is often extremely difficult to work and maintain business relationships with limited resources.