Collection Survey: Halo Labels ‘Increase The Life Span Of Your Clothes’

Halo Labels is a collection of clothing that will make you feel real good. Coming out of Berlin, by the hands of Polish beauty Ala Sowiar, each collection is smart, soft, sculptural and totally cool. To celebrate the label’s most recent campaign, we asked Ala a few questions…

Name: Ala Sowiar

Starsign: Scorpio

Spirt animal: Owl, that comes from my surname.

Any personal beliefs or values that are meaningful to you?
Loving — kindness. Mixed interests in zen, Vedic culture and psychology of the unconscious.

Where are you from and where are you living now?
I am from Poland, Poznan city. Currently living in Berlin.

What parts of these places, or the people in them, have influence Halo Labels — if they haven’t influenced at all, then where do you look for inspiration?
Before mostly in films, contemporary dance and art. During the studies in Berlin I was running a blog halolabels.tumblr.com and being part of my friend Michalina’s amazing project schuhtutehemd.com. We both were born and grew up in the same city, Poznan, where we spend money and time on second hand shopping 😉 I started the brand Halo Labels in 2014 after graduation, as a natural prolongation of the blog and my side interests in materiality. Now I am turning more into the nature, science, simple beauty and basic forms that are for free 😉

Can you tell me a little bit of background on yourself, how/when you started your label, and what you were doing before?
I studied Intermedia (new media and installation art). After a BA I moved to Berlin to continue the program on Universität der Künste (Kunst und Medien). During my media art studies I was especially interested in video projection’s surfaces, how a texture of a textile can influence a projected image and change its appearance. I was creating screens from the different materials and so I got closer to the textiles and their wide possibilities of shaping not only physical objects but the digital images as well. Generally I came to the idea that, the textile and the digital media have more in common that it appears on the first view. Not only the jacquard weaving machine was the first computer, but also the structure of the digital image and the fabric have the same type of coding. They are a mosaic of crossed points and that’s why they are both having a resolution. For me textiles and digital media both describes well the idea of elasticity and variability in contemporary art. Non conformed fashion is another level of expressing the idea of liquid modernity, characterised by ambivalence, the sense of individual uncertainty, undergoing deconstruction of the meanings and rules.

What type of person are you designing for?
Gentle and imaginative.

When you’re shaping a collection, what is most important? Fabrics, shapes, references?
I often come from the textile first, its texture evokes strong associations of shapes and meanings. Fabric is like a soft memory carrier that stimulates our senses and emotions. It is a man-made matter we’ve put on our bodies, essential for us, which we first needed to continue our cultural development. Textile matters, because it has always been close to us.

Can you tell me a little bit about the new collection?
Increase the life span of your clothes is the title of the collection. It’s the word game that sets in the feeling of caring and safety, of the mental comfort connected to both material and the inner worlds. For Halo Labels, feeling good in the clothes, learning how to take care of the body and the surroundings we occupy, is directly linked to the awareness. Halo Labels ’17 collection affirms freedom and softness towards ourselves. The campaign film and photographs show a movement practice class in which the models are able to comfortably celebrate the unrestraint movement and togetherness.

If the collection was a colour: Green-blue
If it was a mood: For relax or slow dance
If it was an animal: Mollusk
If it was a language: Chinese
If it was a place: Ocean floor
If it was a time: Cambrian period
If it was a song: K. Leimer – Very tired
If it was a season: Any, moderate
If it was a food: Dumplings
If it was a famous person: Merce Cunningham
If it was a YouTube video:

If it was a smell: Wet stone
If it was a texture: Sleek, bit slimy
If it was a quote: “When you are not looking I am just a wave form” — Karl Heisenberg
If it was a film: something in between Drawing Restraint by Matthew Barney, Solaris by Tarkovsky and Fata Morgana by Werner Herzog.