Cilka Sadar: From Olympic slopes to Archigram dresses

 After getting injured in training before the competition, she decided to quit snowboarding. “Snowboarding was fun for me because it’s not a traditional sport – it’s more like a subculture. As your whole life is centred around that, you see that style is really important, like in fashion.”

“I came from a good BA program here in Slovenia, but it’s obviously not as challenging nor as demanding. It’s also further away from all the happenings and events and stuff like that. You end up missing some things. I soon realised it would be an intense learning process.”

Cilka showed her first full fashion collection when she opened the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Ljubljana in 2018 after studying BA Textiles in Slovenia at the University of Ljubljana, before moving to London to do her internship at Preen by Thornton Bregazzi and her MA in Fashion at Central Saint Martins. “I came from a good BA program here in Slovenia, but it’s obviously not as challenging nor as demanding. It’s also further away from all the happenings and events and stuff like that. You end up missing some things. I soon realised it would be an intense learning process. For the MA at CSM you already need to know who you are as a designer, what your style and tastes are, and you already should have an idea of what you’re going to do on the course.”

Her MA collection is inspired by her background in snowboarding and architecture, where she references the 60s and Pierre Cardin. She was also inspired by the key architectural projects of the time; the famous Dome over Manhattan project from Buckminster Fuller, and the futuristic Archigram collective that experimented with new ideas for building structures. “The late 60s space age in architecture and in fashion was all about simplifying everything whilst also imagining the future. I don’t think that people imagine the future now as much as they did then – they were all thinking about how people are going to go live in balloons and have hundreds of buttons in the houses.” The Space Odyssey and Courrèges style miniskirts from her collection draw on the simple, minimalist style of the outfits of the time with a sporty edge.

“Specialized sportswear is really funny because it has so many functions that when you wear it as ready-to-wear fashion or streetwear, it just doesn’t make sense.”

Snowboarding since the age of fourteen has definitely shifted her attitude towards fashion, focusing on practicality while making her collection as modular as the layers that were essential on the slopes. “Specialized sportswear is really funny because it has so many functions that when you wear it as ready-to-wear fashion or streetwear, it just doesn’t make sense. You have all these weird pockets for strange gadgets for snow and the mountains. The way that you dress for snowboarding, you always put a first layer on and then you have something that’s more expressive on top of it, finishing it off with a protection layer. Having that system of functions and layers also reminds me of the space age ideology.” With panels, flared knitwear bodysuits and clashing colours, her collection echoes Prada’s Spring/Summer 1996 RTW Fashion Show and the faded snowboarding catalogues from the sixties.

Luckily Cilka was one of the few students at Central Saint Martins who finished her collection in March, but looking back, she would tell anyone starting out that even without the sudden changes this year, “it just goes by really, really fast. Just try to figure out who you are, what you like, and what you’re trying to say. I think it’s not just what you learn on the course, but it’s what you learn from people that you’re on the course with and observe things around you and process them into your work. Because the MA is so full-on you kind of glide through it. Then it’s done all of a sudden and there are no fireworks – you just hand in your work and that’s it.”

She thinks that the fashion industry has a lot to learn from other arts industries like architecture on the hiring process and direct routes into roles. She knows that in architecture, direct routes from university, apprenticeship and training allow students to stand out in their applications. While for some the flexibility afforded with fashion is a good thing, it does lead to a system where some students fall through the cracks. “I think I would like way more of the industry to be transparent with more structure and a defined system. It’s really hard for designers, who are essentially the bedrock to creating this world.”