Dear Belmodo.tv readers,

Today we'd like to give you a preview of our next FW2012-2013 collection 'OMSK - TBILISI'.

We always start our look books with an inspirational text on the collection:

The path in the forest led to a small wooden shelter with stones and planks forming an organic roof. A home for Leo Tolstoï, a place for the mind to wander. Birds flew over our heads in a playful choreography that echoed to the frantic circles of the Lezginka dancers. Women were spreading their arms and scarves, surrounding the men engaged in a symbolic fight. In the streets of Tbilisi we found a treasure preserved by tradition. And as history unfolded, the night slowly embraced the city. Under the pale shades of the moon light, the dominance of the blue, the black and the grey was blooming silently. This nightfall was a promise, a promise that would carry us until dawn when the daylight sets a new stage we call tomorrow.

Photo by Vincent Delbrouck

We also always add some explanation to the prints, embroideries and patterns used in the collection. There is a story behind all of them and we love people to know them!

Some pictures now of the women's collection

The SHUN sweatshirt, one of our classic fit, is here embroidered with the OMSK - TBILISI blazon, a blazon born from the merging of the TBILISI coat of arm and our OMSK blazon.

Last but not least a preview of the men's collection

All look book images are by Valentina Vos.

This has been our last post for Belmodo.tv as guest editors. We had a lot of fun doing them and we hope you liked reading them!

We'd love have you to follow us on our website, facebook, twitter and blog.

Enjoy life!
Lots of hugs,
Valeria & Philippe

Privet again, Belmodo.tv readers!

Here is the second part of our post about OMSK ICONS who are key personalities in Russian art & culture who OMSK pays tribute to through the collections.

This SS2012 season, we used the image of one of Russia's greatest playwriters and physicians: Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). Chekhov is often called 'the Russian Maupassant' and is considered to be one of the best short-story writers in the history of literature.

Chekhov wrote about ordinary people who lived even less ordinary lives. The human life was central to his stories which revolved around the working class, the wage-earning proletariat and their seemingly insurmountable problems, unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. Through his writings, he advocated just an equitable treatment of the less fortunate and strived to raise their lot.

In 1897 Chekhov suffered a lungs hemorrhage. He was persuaded to enter a clinic, where the doctors diagnosed tuberculosis and ordered a change in his style of life. Chekhov bought land on the outskirts of Yalta in Ukraine and built a house there where he moved with his mother and sister the following year.

                                Anton Chekhov & Léon Tolstoy in Chekhov's house in Yalta

I have been reading Anton Chekhov since I was a teenager and I sincerely love his work. Our SS2012 collection is called OMSK/YALTA as we decided to pay respect to the beauty of the Yalta which was often called the Saint Tropez of the Eastern Block and to Anton Chekhov who wrote many of his chef-d'oeuvres there.

You can find this t-shirt on our online shop in the mens section: www.omsk-belgium.com

We could not resist to print 'An Enigmatic Nature', a witty flash fiction written in 1883, next to his portrait!

For our next winter 2012 collection 'OMSK/TBILISI' we pay tribute to writer and playwriter Leo Nikolaïevitch Tolstoï (1828-1910). No need to introduce this world figure of russian literature. His 2 most famous works, the novels War and Peace & Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as 2 of the greatest novels of all time and are also praised as a moral thinker and social reformer.

Enjoy the portrait of a man with a rough, almost wild appearence where the eyes glance like to perls of wisdom.

Tolstoï passed away in 1910, at the age of 82, leaving behind an exceptionally diversified body of work we never get tired of discovering again and again and again.

All OMSK collection photos are by the very talented dutch photographer Valentina Vos. Here is more of her work: www.valentinavos.com

Hello dear readers,

I discovered graphic design after my 7 year course as an architect (studies + internship). I clearly recall the moment when, sitting in front of the computer in the office I was doing my internship, I thought I'd love to find a software on which I could play with fonts. A few months later I was spending my days learning programs for graphic designers and trying to learn the name of all the typefaces I encountered!

I'd like to dedicate this post to typefaces, and more precisely to typefaces in the context of movie trailers. Words superimposed to moving images, it's magical! I will show you a small selection of stills from movie trailers from different periods.

I'll start with movie titles from the 30's and the 40's:

Some movie titles from the 50's:

In the late 50's the designer Saul Bass brought the title design to a new level. He considered trailers as a powerful means to emphasize the movie and not only as a functional and mandatory sequence. He stands for being the first to animate the typefaces. IMoving typefaces are so common nowadays but someone had to invent it!

Some movies he worked on:

Movie titles from the 70's from random designers:

Some movie titles designed by Dan Perri in the 80's. Dan Perri also designed the Star Wars trailers.

Some other stills from the 80's:

It's always very inspirational for me to look at these stills. If you like to have a deeper peek on the subject, have a look at THE MOVIE STILLS COLLECTION where most of the images above are taken from.

Kisses,
Philippe

Hello dear Belmodo.tv followers!

VIKTOR TZOY

For the GIRLS FROM OMSK spring/summer 2009 collection 'GIRLS FROM OMSK go to Austin/Tashkent', we designed a t-shirt with the portrait of an iconic Russian rock musician: Viktor Tzoy, singer of the band Kino.

Tzoy was immensly popular in the Soviet Union of the 80s and he died in an unfortunate car accident in 1990. I sencerely love his music and his lyrics. Here is a video of one of Valeria's favourite songs 'Blood Type'.

Viktor Tzoy tribute wall in Moscow

Besides becoming 1 of our bestselling t-shirts which gave us a following amongst Russian fashion lovers, Viktor Tzoy proved to be the first print of a series of what we now call 'OMSK ICON'. The 'OMSK ICON' is a tribute we pay to a major figure of the Russian culture in every collection through a print or another visual technique.

VLADIMIR VISSOTZKY

For fall/winter 2008-2009 we chose the singer, song writer and actor Vladimir Vissotzky (1938-1980). Although not officially recognised by the Soviet Union authorities as a singer and song writer due to the nature of his lyrics, Vissotzy was very loved and appreciated by the Soviet public. His sudden death, caused by a heart attack at the age of 42, assembled 200.000 fans who came to pay their tribute at his funeral. 

Here is a song in a narrative style Vladimir Vissotzky did zo well:

VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKI

GIRLS FROM OMSK's spring/summer 2011 ICON was the emblematic poet, playwriter and futurist Vladimir Mayakowsky (1893-1930).

Here is an interesting extract by Mayakovski from 1922 about his Futurist group:

Prior to the October Revolution, Futurism -as a unified, exactly formulated trend- did not exist in Russia.

Critics christened everything that was revolutionary and new with his name.

Mayakovski held together a group of Futurists which was busy putting into practice a new approach to poetry and prose.

The only manifesto of this group was the introduction to the anthology 'A Slap in the Face of Public Taste', published in 1913. It was a poetic manifesto, expressing the goals of Futurism in emotional slogans.

The October Revolution marked a departure of the group from the numerous Futuro-imagists who had moved away from revolutionary Russia. It turned the group into 'Communist-Futurists', with these literary tasks:

1. To establish the literary art as a tradecraft in words. Not as an aesthetic stylization, but as the ability to solve in words any problem.
2. To respond to any task set by the present day: 
a) To undertake work on vocabulary (new word formations, sound instrumentation, etc.)
b) To replace the conventional metrics of iambs and trochees with the polyrhythms of language             itself.
c) To revolutionize syntax (simplification of the forms of word combinations, the shock of unusual word usage, etc.)
d) To renew the semantics of words and word combinations.
e) To create models of intriguing subject formations.
f) To reveal the ability of the word acting as poster.

The solution of the above literary problems has the aim of satisfying needs in the most diverse spheres of literary creation (the form, article, telegram, poem, feuilleton, billboard, call to action, advertisement and others).

Concerning the question of prose:

1. There is no genuinely Futuristic prose: there are individual attempts by Khlebnikov, by Kamensky, Kushner's Meeting of Palaces. But these attempts are less significant than the poetry of these same authors. This is explained by the fact that:
a) Futurists make no distinction between the different genres of poetry and view all of literature as a unified literary art.
b) Before the Futurists, it was assumed that lyric poetry had its own circle of themes, its own look, different from the themes and language of so-called artistic prose. For Futurists, this distinction does not exist.
c) Before the Futurists it was assumed that poetry had 1 set of tasks (poetic) and practical speech another set (unpoetic). For Futurists, composing the call for a struggle against typhoid and love poetry are merely different sides of the same literary.

Next time we will tell you about the ICONS we chose for our OMSK collections.

Happy Easter & lots of love,
Valeria & Philippe

Hello,

I'm Philippe, the other part of the OMSK duo. I take care of the graphic design of the label and since recently I'm also involved in the design of the men's line.

Last winter (with the GIRLS FROM OMSK F/W 2011-2012 collection) we did our first knitted pieces. The idea was to keep the graphic approach we had with t-shirts and sweatshirts and transpose it into the knit 'world'. We applied drawings of birds and hand made geometric patterns on unisex pieces. This was our first contact with the art of entwining threads.

Our OMSK S/S 2012 model Eliza Sys drop by last week to get one of these pullovers.

For our first OMSK collection (S/S 2012) we designed very simple jumpers and cardigans to emphasize the fantastic thread we found: a summer cotton yarn on which the colour has been sprayed so that every centimeter is unique. An elegant yet raw looking material that seduced us instantly.

Here are some pictures of these pieces:

For the upcoming F/W 2012 collection we chose different tweed yarns. We like to play with rustic, authentic looking materials and use them for easy-to-wear pieces with a clean cut.

Here is a preview:

I must confess that since we started develop knitted items I progressively fell in love with this technic. It's very complex, rich and the possibilities seem to be infinite, the limits being only those of your imagination. I felt I was entering a world, with its language, its rules and its history.

I've compiled some nice knitwear pieces for you:

Isabel Marant and her raw approach of knit.

An oversize patchwork jumper by Band Of Outsiders (patchwork is Valeria's first love!).

A structured jumper by Paule Ka.

A beautiful cashmere piece from Carven.

And last but not least, a very inspiring cardigan from the Ugly Knitting Patters blog for all the smart men out there!

Enjoy your day!

Best,
Philippe

Privet, dear Belmodo.tv readers! My name is Valeria Siniouchkina and I am the co-founder and designer of the clothing brand OMSK. OMSK is formally known as GIRLS FROM OMSK.

Have you been following our story? If not, then you can now as the Belmodo.tv team has kindly invited my partner in OMSK crime, Philippe Koeune, and myself to be guest editors on their cool website. We gladly accepted and now we have the challenging but exciting responsibility of making this 2 weeks blogging experience fun for all of us!

At the moment as I am enjoying a 1 week holiday -highly deserved, if I may say so myself, héhé!- in Sicily and I'm enjoying it a lot!

Is fashion glamour? Well, mostly it's a lot of work and patience, so good holidays are very welcome!

We made a little visual patchwork of my inspiration photos from the island of Favignana and our Spring/Summer collection.

You can have a look at our collection on our brand new website: www.omsk-belgium.com and leave us a comment on our Facebook page. It's a new page so we need all the love we can get!

Kisses from sunny Sicily,
Valeria