Silvia Labos is a young Romanian designer, right now being in the last year of studying fashion design at the Art University in Timisoara, Romania. You might remember her from this post, where I showcased and actually wore some of her designing projects. ["When you can't beat them, join them"]. She has a lot of designing experience, she worked as a designer and pattern cutter for a Romanian clothing company for several years, right now she works as a designer and pattern cutter for a denim company that produces jeans for Romania and abroad. So, you might understand why I am so impressed by her work, as she knows everything I need to learn: technical sewing and pattern cutting.

The good thing is that she is very open minded and would love to collaborate with me on designing and producing clothing (maybe accessories too), while she would teach me and share her knowledge. I can’t wait to work with her, and also we thought about selling the clothes we make here, on the blog. I am so excited, as this is a very important step in my life. Hopefully you will like and support what we do. Anyway, until we’ll showcase our fashion designing work, here is a neck piece and a bracelet she created. She took inspiration from the Aboriginal culture of Indigenous Australians.

These pieces are up for sale, so if you are interested in getting hand-made creations from my designer friend Silvia Labos, please contact me for further discussions at diana[at]sofashon.com. Also, click to view these pieces from different angles and also to learn more about Indigenous Australians after the jump!

Detailed view of the knot part that represents the closure of the neck-piece.

Front view of the neck-piece.

Side view of the neck-piece.

The bracelet back and front views.

Materials used: rope and brass wire. Thoughts?

“Indigenous Australians are descendants of the first known human inhabitants of the Australian continent and its nearby islands. The term includes both the Torres Strait Islanders and the Aboriginal People, who together make up about 2.5% of Australia’s population. The latter term is usually used to refer to those who live in mainland Australia, Tasmania, and some of the other adjacent islands. Indigenous Australians are recognized to have arrived between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago, though the lower end of this range ( 50 000 BC) has wider acceptance.

The term Indigenous Australians encompasses many diverse communities and societies, and these are further divided into local communities with unique cultures. Fewer than 200 of the languages of these groups remain in use — all but 20 are highly endangered. It is estimated that prior to the arrival of British settlers the population of Indigenous Australians was up to 1 000 000 across the continent.^{[citation needed]} The distribution of people was similar to that of the current Australian population, with the majority living in the south east centered along the Murray River.

Although the culture and lifestyle of Aboriginal groups have much in common, Aboriginal society is not a single entity. The diverse Aboriginal communities have different modes of subsistence, cultural practices, languages, and technologies. However, these peoples also share a larger set of traits, and are otherwise seen as being broadly related.” [credit: wikipedia]

You can see examples of Aboriginal Art here.