Meet the Master
Elena Ryleeva is EWST fashionlab founder and creator of all original content that EWST fashionlab offers through workshops and online courses. She has specialty in Draping and pattern-making where she has achieved internationally recognized mastery.
Besides Elena was running a bespoke tailoring salon for fifteen years in the past and her tailoring and fitting experience provided a profound foundation for perfecting the garment shape in draping work.
Initially trained in women’s outer-wear design and bespoke tailoring Elena subsequently completed fashion design studies and got her Master’s degree in Fashion design and Apparel Engineering.
Upon graduation Elena had became art director and chief designer of "Theater of Costume" the University's experimental design studio which would create 20-25 collections every year and show them on the stage. High quality collections were presented as theatrical show pieces and were destined to promote designer clothing and to be further launched at garment manufacturer.
Elena's experience comprises her work for Italian fashion brands - designing ready-to-wear clothing for numerous companies including but not limited to: Dolce&Gabbana, Anna Marchetti, Armani, Reply and she was creating seasonal collections for Italian brand Frantic and Black Feet.
Her extensive, more than 40 years, expertise covers most areas of fashion design, both theory and practice. Here are Elena' words:
"I have actually been practicing draping for about 15 years now since I bought my first tailor dress form. My previous experience was flat pattern making exclusively, because I was running a bespoke tailoring business for many years and used to draw the patterns directly on the fabric (using basic blocks) and making adjustments directly on clients, this is how I was taught in my first school. This experience gave me the most when I start exploring draping techniques - basically your dress form becomes your "client". And since I knew very well the "fitting" because of practicing the fittings on the clients, the draping method became my tool immediately as there is a direct relation between these two practices. I find the art of draping extremely useful for designing clothing."
Elena has taught Fashion Design academic courses including Draping, Pattern-making, and Fashion collection in a few different countries and has traveled with her own master-classes worldwide.
Elena has own distinctive method of teaching Draping skills, she call it “Designing directly on a dress-form”. Attendees of Elena’s workshops say that her teaching is impeccable and classes enormously enchanting.
Apart of teaching online and offline courses and master-classes Elena develops Fabricscape project. "Fabricscape" is innovative pattern-cutting approach devised by Elena that is destined to initiate a new conscious direction in designing of clothing and accessories.
See more about Elena's work:
