Lena Erziak: Couture, with Authority
Aphrodite Delarp
Season after season, Lena Erziak composes a couture that refuses neutrality. Instead, her silhouettes command space, carefully balancing structure and sensuality, restraint and excess. Nothing is merely ornamental rather, everything is intentional. For her Fall–Winter 2025–26 Couture collection, presented in Paris, Erziak sharpens this language even further. Volumes are more decisively sculpted, lines grow increasingly assertive, and femininity is treated not as an ideal, but as a force. Consequently, couture here becomes a statement, poised, unapologetic, and deeply personal.
IRK: Your collections always unfold as a strong narrative. When you begin creating, what ignites the story: an emotion, an image, a memory?
Lena Erziak: It begins with an inner emotion. My mind explores endlessly, but the story crystallizes around the spark that refuses to fade, the one that returns with the most urgency. I take it, reshape it, and transform it into a world of silhouettes.
IRK: Your universe moves between strength and fragility, structure and fluidity. How do you construct this tension within your silhouettes?
Lena Erziak: I build tension through opposition. Structure comes from corseted lines, engineered seams, and controlled volumes. Fragility lives in movement ; hand-pleats, weightless drape, or poetic deconstruction. My creations, like so much in life, are an act of balance: strength anchors the body, fragility reveals the soul in motion. That contrast is where my language lives.
IRK: The Lena Erziak Fall–Winter 2025–26 collection is markedly sculptural. What were you seeking to express through these volumes and architectural lines?
Lena Erziak: The sculptural volumes in Iron Sakura were my way of giving form to dual reverence; the visible strength of the samurai armor and the quiet mystery of the geisha. Inspired by Jacques Fath’s pointed busts, the silhouettes sculpt the body with bold architectural presence. In Japan, beauty isn’t small or loud; it occupies space with intention. I wanted my designs to do the same: to protect, to intrigue, and to stand like monuments of emotion. These volumes express a woman who blooms like sakura; architectural in presence, poetic in power, and endlessly fascinating in her contradictions.
IRK: You often describe couture as a language. What does couture allow you to articulate that ready-to-wear cannot?
Lena Erziak: Couture is a language because it allows me to speak in ways that ready-to-wear cannot. It gives me the freedom to explore extremes ; strength and fragility, structure and fluidity and to translate emotion into form. With couture, the sky is the limit: I can play with scale, material, and detail to create silhouettes that are simultaneously monumental and intimate. Couture exists to make you dream; ready-to-wear is there to dress you in your everyday moments.
IRK: Your designs carry an almost theatrical presence. How important are image, staging, and attitude in your creative process?
Lena Erziak: I have often been told my work feels cinematic, and that is exactly how I approach it. Image, staging, and attitude are inseparable from the garments themselves. Couture, for me, is a performance: every fold, every silhouette, every movement tells a story. Theatricality allows me to amplify emotion, to reveal strength, fragility, and presence in ways that stillness cannot. I design not just the piece, but the world it will inhabit; how it breathes, moves, and commands attention
IRK: Lena Erziak, you dress women across very different contexts, from stage to private life. Do you design for an ideal figure or for a plurality of women?
Lena Erziak: I design for a plurality of women, not a single ideal. Each woman carries her own presence, rhythm, and story, and my work responds to that diversity. Couture allows me to create forms that adapt, amplify, and honor individuality on stage, in private life, or anywhere in between. My silhouettes are not meant to conform; they are meant to celebrate difference, strength, and grace in all its variations. Ultimately, each garment is a dialogue with the woman who wears it, a way to make every version of femininity feel visible and extraordinary.
IRK: What role does emotion play in your process: origin, tool, or outcome?
Lena Erziak: Emotion plays a crucial role; it is the origin, the tool, and the canvas of creation. Without it, creativity would be soulless. I begin every collection, every interior, from an inner impulse, a feeling that rises from within, which is then amplified and transformed by countless external influences: experiences, travels, architecture, research, textures, colors, and encounters. Emotion guides every choice I make, shapes every form, and ultimately becomes the language through which the work communicates. It is both the spark and the heartbeat of everything I create.
IRK: Finally, how would you define contemporary couture in one sentence — on your own terms?
Lena Erziak: Contemporary couture is the fearless translation of imagination and emotion into forms that command space, defy convention, and endure beyond fashion itself. It’s wearable art brought to life by the meticulous little hands and countless hours of true craftsmanship.
Lena Erziak’s Language of Authority
Lena Erziak does not design to seduce easily. Instead, she designs to assert, to mark, and ultimately to remain. In a fashion landscape increasingly driven by immediacy and noise, her couture, by contrast, stands apart. It is precise, controlled, and deeply emotionally charged. As a result, her vision does not ask for attention; rather, it commands it.
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Aphrodite Delarp is a stylist and public relations strategist who thrives at the intersection of creativity and culture. After making waves in PR at Harper’s Bazaar, he now shapes stories and connections at Irk Magazine, blending strategy with a sharp eye for style. Equally at home crafting a look or designing a project, he is also a designer and a true pluridisciplinary artist. His work defies boundaries, challenges conventions, and turns every endeavor into a statement of originality and vision.
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