was born. Soon her clients included Estonian celebrities, and luxurious evening gowns and collections for grand fashion shows became every day business. The most memorable show staged by the Katrin Kuldma Fashion House was undoubtedly the one which took place in the Niguliste Church back in September 1998, where around hundred evening gowns and suits were shown off by famous and glamorous beauties. “This was a movie-like experience, seeing the original idea on paper become a complete visual performance with its own environment, lighting and music,” recalls Katrin fondly. At all the biggest shows put on by Katrin, the music has been created by Villu Veski, one of the most famous jazz musicians in Estonia.
Katrin Kuldma opened her first studio in the middle of the 1990s as a fresh graduate from the Estonian Academy of Arts. “Estonian arts- and design education has always been of a high quality. Tallinn Fashion House and the former magazine ‘Silhouette’ used to be trendsetters in the Soviet Union and a window on the West. I have also studied in the United States and in comparison I consider the strengths of Estonian arts education to be creativity and the promotion of conceptual thinking,” says Katrin. “The naivety in youth is such a driving force,” Katrin is convinced. “The will and courage to start my own business and to organise grand fashion shows was certainly based on overconfidence, as when I first started I didn’t really even know what VAT was,” laughs Katrin, when recalling the early days in the business. In her small studio based in Kalamaja in Tallinn, she created custommade orders both for friends and for fashion walkways. Soon Katrin was headhunted for the position of Head Designer at the Tallinn Fashion House. In the following year she had already acquired the special orders unit of the fashion house and this is how a glamorous fashion house
“Another movie-like experience was the competition to create the costumes for the Eurovision Song Contest that took place in Estonia in 2002,” continues Katrin. “The dress patterns took their direction from the whole concept of the show, also taking into account how they would look on the television screen and the wishes of the stars themselves. The Ice Dress created for the presenter Anneli Peebo, a well-known opera singer in Europe, was perhaps the dress above all the other dresses which I have created. The Nordic ice pattern was hand-drawn on to the paper patterns of the dress and then scanned and transferred onto fabric in a printing house. The white printed lines were later covered in pearls. This handmade job alone took three months,” recalls Katrin about the challenge. In parallel with high fashion, Katrin continued to be active in the industrial design landscape, working as Head Designer in the Development Team at Sangar, which produces men’s shirts and jeans. When she was offered the opportunity to become Head Designer at the Klementi Sewing Factory and PTA in 2002, Katrin closed the doors of her own fashion house, took along some key colleagues and made the plunge into the clothing industry. “Of course I was sad to close this chapter, but I could not see a new development level for a fashion house specialising in high-quality handmade private orders. Creating collections for fashion brands, and developing retail concepts was exciting and challenging,” Katrin says, recalling the reasons making that decision. Five years ago when Katrin Kuldma left her job as Head Designer at Klementi, she once again chose to become a businesswoman.
SUMMER 2012
I LIFE IN ESTONIA
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