THEFOUR has presented Memory, the FW21/22 collection of the womenswear label. We talked with Márton (Marci) Miovác & Anett Gálvölgyi, the genius minds behind the fashion brand, and they shared with us the values they promote with their garments, their love for Budapest, and their thoughts about how clothes can help us show the best version of ourselves.
Márton Miovác & Anett Gálvölgyi – THEFOUR Budapest | Exclusive Interview
VT: Which would you say are the values of THEFOUR?
TF: Treasuring diversity, blurring lines that divide, topicality, and striving for long-standing validity.
VT: You have always shown strong and positive messages with your fashion pieces; what can you tell us about it?
TF: We have always believed that creating designs requires an ideological underpinning. The reason for this is that the objects that surround a person exercise an impact on them, and thus they can act as vessels of messages. Our goal is to make THEFOUR pieces a means to attribute strength, confidence, and a feeling of security to their wearer.
Self-expression through garments
VT: As individuals with particular points of view, how do you manage the creative decisions of your brand?
TF: The dynamic of clashing ideas is key in our workflow, and most of the time, we manage to merge seemingly opposite concepts into one synergic design.
For Marci, getting dressed is a fun way of self-expression. -Anett sees it as a problem to solve. In-person, Anett has a more careless, easy-going attitude. Marci is very polite and social. When we design, Maci is the risk-taker. -And Anett tends to be the moderate one.
Anett focuses on the overall shapes. -Marci directs his attention to the details.
VT: Could you tell us more about the importance of self-expression for THEFOUR?
TF: We are convinced that the clothes we wear are a form of communication and, as such, they say a lot about ourselves. Self-expression through garments is, therefore, not only important for designers but also wearers. THEFOUR offers creations that, instead of overshadowing the character of their wearer, accentuate it through the power of choice and the beauty of diversity. We like to see our designs as something with actual substance, not just smoke and mirrors.
VT: How about the ethnic aesthetics we see in your collections?
TF: We find the cultural heritage of humankind particularly inspirational, and when drawing from the various wells of ethnic designs, we do not prefer one aesthetic to another.
It is crucial to see that we do not want to commit any kind of cultural misappropriation; on the contrary, we find value in juxtaposing different sources that create their own new aesthetic. This is another reason why we sorely miss traveling: submerging in foreign fabrics and accessories usually sparks ideas that are then developed into collections.
These collections, in turn, embed some ethnic items and match them with surprising counterparts.
HFDA and the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana
VT: What is your relationship with the HFDA and the Budapest Select?
TF: HFDA, in partnership with CameraNazionale della Moda Italiana, provides the mentoring background for our brand to support THEFOUR’s re-entry to the international market. At the Milano Fashion Week, we appear with Hungarian designers under the Budapest Select umbrella brand, which ensures a uniform look while retaining our own image elements.
VT: Let us talk about your collection for the COLLECTIVE FASHION SHOW – FW21/22. What do you like the most about it?
TF: Up until now, we have shunned the aesthetic of the ’80s in our previous collections – maybe because that was the decade in which we were both born. This was the first time when we consciously chose to refer to the late ’80s in terms of shapes, materials, and colors, and it was a real pleasure retrieving and representing ourselves in the process.
Thinking about humanity
VT: Why Memory? Why now?
TF: The theme of our collection has a dual meaning.
Firstly, in order to make better decisions in the future, we need to look into the past. We need to learn from our own mistakes and success!
This has validity both on a personal and the collective level. Humanity has endured several crises, and the current pandemic will be one of these “survival acts” in retrospect. We need to focus on how to reboot the world after such a strike, but it probably won’t be the same as before. It is, however, up to us which forms these changes take.
On the other hand, digital memory has a more and more powerful presence in our lives. Its expansion is inevitable, but we need to set boundaries to how much we allow digitization to take control over our data, and indirectly, our decisions.
In the pieces themselves, playful reminiscence and sharp protective lines represent these notions.
VT: Which advice would you give to all those teenagers who might be thinking about starting a career in fashion-related activities?
TF: Dream big and set audacious goals, and enjoy even the hard times while reaching them.
VT: Anything else you would like to share with Vanity Teen?
Take time for thinking.
Before we go
Marci and Anett use THEFOUR Budapest and their words to remind us of the importance of using memory to know who we are, consider otherness and diversity, and think about what is coming next.
They have recommended we should dream big and use our time wisely, paying attention to our thinking. Therefore, let us remember their words and use our minds to impulse our actions towards a plural world in which fashion gets to bring us united.