Meet & Greet : ZafteLV

"Zafte" is Latvian slang word meaning synonymous to the words “juicy,” “fruitful” and “potent” - a delightful substance created through skilful work combining spring blossoms, summer rain and warm sun...

Inara and Ingrida have been working together since 2008 and are passionate about recycling, as you can see in the items they create.

Blue / pale yellow dress 

I asked them a few questions and here is what they had to share:

Tell us a little about yourself and what you sell.
We are two Latvian designers: Inara Gauja - professional and experienced theatre stage and costume designer, sometimes doing also nice interiors, and Ingrida Zabere - one of the best Latvian graphic designers, gained the master degree in fashion design last year. We are bygone art colledge schoolmates and met by accident in year 2008. We decided to embark a common business establishing a new design company Zafte ltd. and to focus our main attention to the new design project RECYCLED.LV. The fashion design is a new experience for both of as.

denim shirt with cowl neck

What is your favorite thing about creating?
We are in our 40-ies and have been creative all our lifes. Creating new unprecedented ideas does inspire our spirits, especially, if the brilliant things can be made out of all but nothing. We find it boring to follow some mainstreem or to repeat or copy something or somebody. We make our lifes interesting and find our joy and spirits in doing something different.

jumpsuitdress

Why did you decide to work with upcycled/recycled/repurposed/vintage materials?
The world around us nowadays is filled up with all different commercial articles made for short life and to be useless after that. We find it interesting for us and usefull in terms of ecology to prolong the ready-made but useless things' life using them for recreating into original and inspiring one-of-a-kind designs. We are eager to inspire people how actual and interesting looks can be created out of obsolete stuff and to put this approach instead of one-season commercial fashion shopping. We feel responsibility for ecology and sustainability, so we use ours and call others for CREATIVITY. Speaking of materials - upcycled/recycled/repurposed/vintage materials are interesting themselves and very inspiring as they have their own story like people their biographies.

Apron Janis

What is your favorite thing about running your etsy shop?
Etsy gives us a positive feedback together with some commercial success to support our recycled business. I like to find here many intersting creative persons and their bright ideas to keep our upcycler's spirits high. But we have not been very active on Etsy so far as a lot of our time is occupied with other projects and family.

What inspires you to create/sell what you do?
The most inspiring in whole the producing process is forming the idea of old stuff's new looks. So the creative process itself is the source of inspiration and excitement - a challenge to change some thing's identity. Some detail or nuance of the old thing can bring straight to the creative idea.

Cinnamon duster and dustpan

How do you keep your creative space inspiring?
Ingrida finds her vigour in education and perfection of her personality. Inara thinks the designer's ability to create can be compared to tuning the musician's instrument - it should be ready when it's needed. The positve impressions and enough of free time are also needed. (The free time is currently a problem for Inara as she has a baby.)

Find ZafteLV at:
ZafteLV.etsy.com
Zafte.lv
recycled.lv

Thanks Inara & Ingrida for sharing with us today!

See you next week,
Valerie
Everyday Inspired