Ira Iceberg, the artist that became a fashion designer is truly one of my personal creative heroes. It is evident that she trained in classical art using mediums such as oil and canvas. The digital age had changed her medium drastically therefore her art has evolved into creating in a way that interacts with the observer. The observer turns into the art to be observed. Her past collections have always had a more solemn tone to them but Spring Summer 2024 had a refreshing twist of underlying humor. I picked up on it immediately and was relieved to hear Ira's explanations on them. I caught up with her quite by accident in Paris, via social media and was absolutely delighted when she agreed to an interview. This collection just completely blew me away, so much so that I insisted on purchasing one of her new pins on site. My best acquisition at Paris Fashion Week!

Interview with Ira Iceberg

Can you tell me a little bit about your background in design? How did you come to fashion design?

I never studied fashion design, not in the formal way. My background is in fine art, and I have been painting since I was a little girl. Oil painting mostly. Then once Apple released this wonderful iPad Pro product, I became addicted from the very first moment and started using hand painting in digital format. At some point, I decided that I would like to try and combine visuals that I create with garments in order to create clothes that are a little bit more expressive and you can choose the image you like and express yourself rather than just having something standard and everybody look the same. So, I started pattern cutting and pattern construction myself. I'm very much interested in the Japanese approach to pattern construction where there is a dialogue between the body, garment and the space that is created between these two rather than garment contouring the body as it is in western culture. So, I try to build this, three-dimensional clothing, and then to apply the prints directly on the pattern so that it's not only picture copy pasted into the garment, but it actually follows the line of the pattern. And this is what catapulted the brand so rapidly into everybody's attention because of the look it created. This was just so different.

I noticed that your garments are usually always on a black background, what was the reason behind that color choice?

I love colors in theory, but once I started working with the designs I somehow always end up finding out that the message I want to deliver, in this often very expressive, very intense messages, they work the best on a black background because this provides the maximum depth and the maximum attention. They kind of emerge. If you look at the collection around you, you can see the images emerging from the garment. I didn't want to create this noise when the garment and the image compete with each other, I wanted them to work together; and then again, and again, I landed into this combination of black and print. I did design a few collections that were black free. For example, Spring/Summer ‘21 was inspired by a Japanese architect and the entire collection was prints of concrete so there was no black whatsoever. But you are right, most of the things I created are black and for the reasons that I just explained.

What was your thought behind this season? What story are you conveying the season?

Now this is something actually, very interesting and quite different from what I normally create, because normally our collection structure has many different and very complicated garments. But this time, I wanted to deliver a message via the garments. So the collection is called, “Unspoken Ambitions” and I find myself often saying things to myself, like all the silly stupid things like, “...oh I wish I was skinnier.”, “I wish I was Kim Kardashian.”, “I wish he brought me flowers.”...You know, things like that. [Things] that you're not even brave enough to say aloud but it's there. And this is why it's called “Unspoken Ambitions” because I wanted to take each one. So there are 10 different designs. I wanted to take each one of these unspoken little ambitions. They are little, but they're there and it's so important and put it all in a similar format. So I chose a masculine oversized black blazer. They are all the same. And then each one of them on top of it, we saw the print. I can show you the example, here, that's my favorite. I Love it.

(Ira pulls out the corset printed jacket.)

So there is a lot of dialogue going on conceptually here because it's something black and masculine. And, and then you have this beautiful corset, it's sewn on top of it. So we establish a dialogue here on so many different levels.

(The jacket with the long blonde hair down each side is next…)

And this is, this is Kim Kardashian for example. That kind of trails along the back of a jacket and then the front. I always wanted to be blonde.

(Then we move onto the jacket with the long braid down the back and the jackets with the jewels printed all over.)

Yeah, like the Rapunzel! Yes, look! I love the jewelry. So they're another ambition: it's like, “I wish I was rich.” Yeah, it just sounds pathetic, but I'm pretty sure that most of us have had these thoughts at one point or another. And this is where it came from because it's rich. It's very, very rich, very expensive jewelry. So this is the idea behind this collection.

(Ira pulls the jacket with a pair of legs wearing stockings and hot pants.)

This one is, “I wish I could dress sexy and be taken seriously.”

(A jacket with the female form, which is actually the statue of Venus, is next.)

This is very beautiful, this one. The naked body. It is just a perfection of the female body so it's, “I wish I was perfect.”

Where are you seeing your transition for next season?

It's really hard to say because I can tell you now whatever. But you know, it's just I allow myself a fair share of flexibility. Not to forget that. It's supposed to be creative, first of all. So the way I see today, I am interested to continue exploring this new idea of combining repetitive pieces with different pieces of information on top of it. But this is how I feel today. I don't know what would be the end. I'm also quite interested recently in exploring garments that were very out [there] for me for now. For example, hoodies or more casual things. I experimented already in my studio, I tried to combine a hoodie with a tailored jacket. Not in the way that there is a jacket with a hood in it, but to sew pieces of a blazer or jacket on top of a hoodie to invert the equation. So I started to experiment with that, that is something that's interesting to me, so maybe something like that. It's going to be a winter collection. Something along this line, I think, but as I said, it might change as well.

With your previous collections there was a feeling of severity but in this new collection there's a sense of not taking yourself very seriously and finding the humor.

I guess, whatever I do reflects my personal feeling, my personal state at this moment. I guess it's just that I feel a little bit more relaxed, maybe because I'm not having runway shows anymore. So probably this is where it came from. It's just you know, perhaps I could catch myself sometimes thinking things like that. So, yeah, why not? I mean, I feel that life, especially in the UK, life is so tough. So much is about struggle and difficulty and everything. I don't feel that I need to contribute to bringing more darkness at this point even if that was what I was doing for all the [previous] seasons. But now I feel, I want to actually bring something a little bit more funny and a little bit more light.

I even designed these teddy bear brooches. Which is kind of unusual for me, but there, you know, you can pin them on your blazer on your back whenever you want. This is a vampire teddy and this is a bride teddy and we have a hipster, he didn't come to the show, but we have a hipster as well. Here are jewels and angels, and this frog…

(I get ridiculously distracted at this point and the interview comes to an abrupt end as I made Ira part with one of her angel brooches. I felt like I had won Fashion Week at this point.)

**Link to IA London’s SS24 collection is below the photo gallery.

IA London SS24