INTERVIEW

with RahatLook. // Elena Covic (owner) and Bjanka Mujicic (partner), Bosnian Fashion Gurus

-by Ale Zapata (Curator at Improper Walls)

What’s RahatLook.?

RahatLook. (rahat رَاحَة: “rest”, “comfort”, “peace of mind”) is a platform for promoting culture, lifestyle and fashion from previous decades, with a special love for the 80s & 90s. Since 2013 in the fight against the uniformed mainstream trends and environmental destruction our weapons are unique, colorful and quality pieces that make you badass, sustainable and simply unique. We have a special passion for digging in various flea markets throughout Europe looking for vintage gems that we then soak in rahat energy and pass on to you where you continue their story. Our influencers are the styles of your and our mothers, grandmothers and aunts. The closets and clothes they left behind give an opportunity to reconnect you with your family over memories from the clothing, as well as breathe new life into pieces that deserve to be loved and shared with the world.

What motivates you?

I personally consider doing this job more as a life vocation than as an activity I am engaged in,

so motivation is never lacking. That whole spark has the whole rahat team in it and the goal for all of us is to find and save as many amazing and unique designs from previous decades as possible before they are discarded and sent to Africa and Asia or worse, into eternal oblivion. The clothes that were produced and worn at the time were something completely different from what various fast fashion brands sell to us today. They are primarily produced in ethical humane conditions in factories across Europe with quality designed to break durability records. Most important of all, those same clothes were bought, loved and worn for a long time and kept in closets as valuable objects. We are looking for and we choose such pieces, we try to present their advantages and show a different type of consumerism and how it can be full of love, conscious and sustainable.

How did you survive 2020?

Pre-corona, RahatLook organized monthly flea markets in Cafe 7stern every first Sunday, where we would present more than 500 vintage pieces that we had collected from all over Europe and that were waiting for find their new closets.

That event was something like Fashion Speed Dating. We were incredibly happy to see people find it something that cheers them up, reminds them of their childhood or when they find a whole new style for themselves thanks to only one piece of clothing. Unfortunately this year we had less of these events, and that is what saddens us because direct communication with people makes it easier to present to them the benefits of sustainable fashion in the hope of getting as many people as possible to switch to a different form of consumerism.

What are your current projects/future plans?

We have developed many plans for the future and due to this stagnant year we have had a lot of time to prepare for the coming one. At our flea markets, we conducted a survey among customers about their needs, the way they shop and what problems they have in their closet. We learned that more than 70% of customers have more clothes than they wear. These pieces often accumulate in their closet and are sometimes worn only a few times, or almost never. As these clothes are mostly bought in season or due to some trend from fast fashion chains, their value and quality at the end of the same season is very low and almost impossible to resell or send

further, and this is why most things end up in landfills creating huge environmental problems. We will focus in 2021 to try to solve this problem in your closet, on a local basis.

We will soon be offering an option in Vienna that will allow you to wear and have an incredible amount of available items from our closet for you without the need to buy them. Our goal is for you to have as many opportunities as possible to try new trends, styles and have fun with fashion without costly consequences for the environment.

You'll find out soon on our Rahatlook. platform.

Instagram: _RahatLook_

See the full Photoshoot and a Behind the Scenes video below: