Liisa Orgna

From childhood, Liisa (yes, it's two ii's) was drawn towards the work of her sportwear designer mother. This lead her from making clothes for her dolls and providing design advice for her mother, into the fashion design course at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Estonia sits at the crossroads of Eastern, Western and Northern Europe, and has embraced high-tech as a way of maintaining its independence, which includes a rich artistic tradition. While Liisa embraces the aesthetic traditions of Estonian craft and the natural beauty of the countryside, she articulates these through modern technology. This has taken her to the other side of the world, Australia, for a year of fashion studies at the RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) University's School of Architecture and Design. Immersed in one of the world's most liveable cities, with access to leading edge laser technologies, she has evolved her cultural aesthetics into a signature style: sophisticated streamlined simplicity. Her work has been selected for exhibition at RMIT and the GPO Exhibition Space (a leading fashion destination) in Melbourne. A young woman with initiative, she sought and gained an internship with Sydney based designer Dion Lee, one of the most interesting designers coming out of Australia. Drawing on traditional craft skills, applied with meticulous care, she contributed to garments being prepared for overseas exhibition. Liisa's family and cultural background, and her own emerging eye, have resulted in developing an aesthetic that combines functionality and high-tech features with an aesthetic simplicity. That she can evoke sophisticated, streamlined simplicity from a sportswear aesthetic suggests she is in tune with the zeitgeist. With women who want to move freely but look cool. Cool, that is.