GEORGE BEZHANISHVILI

Born and raised in Tbilisi (Georgia), George commenced his architecture studies after school. He quickly realised that sculpting and decorating the human body was far more interesting than the creation of buildings: “After a while (actually after a very short time), I decided that I would rather build small buildings on the human body, instead of creating high skyscrapers.” With support from his family, he left his hometown and applied to the renowned fashion department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Everything happened really quickly, he says, suddenly he found himself in the class run by Belgian designer Veronique Branquinho, and now he is in his final year before graduation. From October George plans to start working on his graduate collection, which he will present in June 2011. “In these past five years, I have experienced so many things in my life, numerous changes, being on my own, fighting for my work, new friends who became almost like my family, and all this has influenced my personality in a very strong way.” My current menswear collection is inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s triptychs, nude figures and tremendous fruit and birds, nature and the emotions surrounding them, “punishments for the various types of sinners”. Other important sources of inspiration are the looks of men like Devendra Banhart, Dash Snow and Vincent Gallo. George is currently working with his friend Franziska Fürpass on a womenswear collection, based on the works of French artist Louise Bourgeois; we can’t wait to see it!