Sabinna / Miriam H. Auer

Designer
Sabinna

Sabina Rachimova is the co-founder and Director of SABINNA STUDIOS, a newly launched London-based fashion brand specialising in womenswear and accessory design. All the items are produced in the UK and Austria, using only high quality materials as well as upcycled plastic to generate fresh and exciting fabrics with unique textures. Imbued with a vivid sense of imagination, precision and sophistication, the designs reveal a compelling mix of references with traces of the ecclesiastical, Russian folk dress, and world of hyper modernity. Rachimova was born in Russia and raised in Vienna. She attained her BA in Fashion Design with Marketing from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. During her studies in London she gained valuable work experience in the fashion industry through her internships at Christian Dior Couture in Paris and the highly acclaimed London-based fashion designer Mary Katrantzou. Prior to moving to London Rachimova worked as a womenswear design assistant at Schella Kann. SABINNA STUDIOS has already achieved international success through a pop-up store at MQ Vienna Fashion Week S/S 2015 and a showroom during Paris Fashion Week S/S 2015. In 2015 SABINNA STUDIOS will be stocked in both Russia and Kuwait. 

www.sabinna.com

Author
Miriam H. Auer

Auer was born in 1983 in Friesach and currently teaches the English Poetry and Intertextuality course in the Department of English and American Studies at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt. In addition to her academic pursuits Auer writes poetry, short plays, prose, song lyrics and has recently had her philosophically-charged novel Hinter der Zeit (‘Behind the Times’) published by the Austrian publisher Edition Meerauge. In 2012, Auer was one of five authors shortlisted for the Kärntner SchriftstellerInnenverband Literature Prize, and in 2014 she was awarded second place in the prize’s New Literature category. 

I tell my stories: I tell them to never be silent. Once upon a time there was a little Darkness. She longs to be seen, newborn, underneath your white dress, enveloped in bobbin lace, her many faces looking up to Daddy Janus. Daddy-Two-Face. Little Darkness is sitting in a highchair adorned with unicorns that are busy impaling dreams and devouring hearts on bloody little cloudlets. Each unicorn is called Vlad.

Janus’ storytime in sign language begins beyond time, yet not belatedly. Moving imagery, handmade. The little one is rejoicing in her tiny straitjacket with bobbin lace – the only jacket little Darkling has ever known.

Through ten masks you peer into Darkling’s world. You cannot help it, you are bound to each other, sewn together, that is. The number of your faces can be counted on two little hands. Vlad and Vlad and Janus are looking into your puppet-faces. You’re still young, headless. Don’t lose your head! Bodies are dancing elsewhere, flat shoes on, with laces tied too loosely.

The phantomato is a transcendental offspring of the nightshade family. You’re eating it raw to let it dye you, allying you with red. Your future is struggling for air in the handbag of Lady Lazarus. Sylvia Plath killed herself. She closed her eyes in the oven and her world dropped dead. Sautéed guilt. Crispy momentariness. Darkling and you were inside her eye back then, trapped. You could not be saved. You remained raw. That’s where the red comes from.

Ihave to provide the two of you, who were born prematurely, with new clothing. I have to write Janus and Vlad and Vlad out of your lives to turn them into a fairy-tale-like parable, loping. In shades of reds and whites, to enable you to lie down next to the years that life is spreading over rainbows. More colours are waiting inside the handbag. Don’t break them. They are as fragile as Darkling. Breathe in the colours before they break to keep you from bleeding when you’ll be exhaling rainbows, weeping silk. Stay careful, as spiders are seeking your heart like they once were seeking Trakl’s.

Only on the outside we have one face only. Underneath the superficiality we are searching for more humanity. With our fingers we are reaching into our heads to see with our own hands, if we have not forgotten ourselves. Beneath the tracery of our braided hair a timber-framed room constructs itself, one where the lights cannot find us and shadows will soon call off the search. Darkling, come! We need to walk through mirrors to blend right into our new gowns. In a fever, I ask the Milky Way Maid for a white sip and for the right way. We walk through doubled imagery. Our faces forgive the mirrors, forgive them everything.

The tunes produced by our duelling air guitars engaging in a phantom match echo through glasshouses. The little opal crocodile attached to the handbag we used to live in when we were finger-puppets did not go blind, although it faced the uproar leading to the downfall. The air guitars’ most silent melody healed shattered rainbow-glass, masks sank to the ground. Now we are standing on the margin. Of everything. We are satisfied. Self-confident, not at a loss of who our true selves are, with many a face, not faceless, without broken heels, skipping the DecaDance Tournament. Together, we shall rise and bloom, be enlightened. For us, the willow weeps with joy.