Elizaveta's Headbands

My friend Elizaveta or just 'Liza', arrives at our long awaited catch up drinks at the Charlotte Street Hotel with her waist length hair in a braid and her face framed by a rose and crystal encrusted halo. When we sat down on the plush sofas she opened a pink satin case and showed me her little collection of uniquely beautiful ornamental headbands. 'I started making them over the summer in Moscow when I saw that the Dolce and Gabbana ones [headbands] from the A/W show had hit the stores'. When she heard that they were retailing for 600-2000 USD it just made sense to create her own in colours she wanted that suited her clothes. 'My mother's friends saw them and really liked them so when they went shopping, the designer Valentin Yudashkin noticed them and asked if I could make a few for his store'. Sipping on her raspberry and guava cooler she recalls the past month where back in London, she was asked to showcase some samples at London Fashion Week. She highlighted her brief but one of those fashionable- life- historic moments when Carine Roitfeld complimented her on her headband at the Stella McCartney show.

The Prada-esque headband

They are so versatile yet bold they are like tiaras for the everyday kind of princess. Taking inspiration from the Dolce show, Liza styles hers with great swinging antique earrings from the 1920's. Yet she adds her own twist with a fitted leather jacket, creating the most dreamy romantic yet cosmopolitan look. This kind of eclectic style of the past and the city is also echoed in the making her accessories. She collects the beads and the plain bands from pre-existing jewelry and beads that have caught her eye when shopping. It makes such a refreshingly personal approach to the creative process where many designers these days are bulk buying everything.
The key to harmonizing the many elements of the headbands is continuous refinement; Liza says she can finish a single piece in an hour only to take it apart and start again, making the whole process a five hour one.
'At the showcase I got requests for ones with skulls like quite punky ones and I can do that, but that's not me, that's not what I wanted to do'. Although she believes in crafting them as individual pieces that others can wear, they are true to her vision of creating until they are perfect in her eyes.
There is nothing more genuine than a designer that would wear her own designs everyday as if they were a part of her.





This one reminds me of a Pre- Raphaelite garland