Playing in the 3D prints world: an interview with the artist Tammy Lovin

She says she didn’t want to be a fashion designer, but a product designer. Lucky for us, Tammy Lovin signs, today, a lot of cool & funny clothes, with the most incredible 3D prints – blue bananas, pink balloons, orange pipelines and a lot of possibilities to customise them in everyone’s terms. “It’s just a medium I use to conglomerate my work”, says Tammy about all the images with her clothes (and jewellery) we see (a lot) on social media. “It just so happens to also work as a shopping platform”. I talked with Tammy Lovin about design, about fashion scene and its challenges, about prints and never-ending wonders of digital world.

Tammy pieces are available on… you can explore and play with combinations of patterns and colours on my item on https://mysimplicated.com/tammylimited 

Your first fashion crush story was related to…

I never really had an interest in fashion, to be honest. When I was a product design student we looked down at those enrolled in fashion courses. It seemed like all they do is just mess around with materials, make silly gowns and give themselves much more importance than they should. 

The first time I started to pay attention to items of clothing was when I discovered the creations of Ioana Ciolacu and Lana Dumitru at designer’s boutique sales. The items were different from mass market fashion. They both created pieces for the now, it seemed to me almost like a form of contemporary art. A manifesto you could wear. I started buying many pieces from local Romanian designers, and this went on for about 3 years before I even had a thought that I could make my own.

Ever since I started my clothing line a year and a half ago, my whole perspective on fashion changed completely. I learned about cuts and patterns, about draping on the human body and the huge number of technical aspects involved in the process of manufacturing from choosing fabric, matching the print to the human body and to the finished product. As an industrial designer I have to be honest about this and tell you that at first I was overwhelmed of the whole thinking process that was very different from what I was used to when designing objects. 

The moodboard for your 2020 collection includes…

My pieces will always have neon bright colours, digital prints made in 3D software, new materials with futuristic textures. Each item and print I get out there represents my current mood and the things that draw my attention in the now. It’s all very personal actually.

The most extravagant thing you wish to design is… 

I am trained to be able to design anything so even if I encounter difficulties along the way, nothing should be too extravagant. I have in mind for the future to work on designing futuristic set-ups and technology for movie sets, and getting involved in automotive concept designing.

The icon piece that will always be in your collections is (why)… 

Probably there isn’t one. I don’t hold myself and this collection on such a high horse as to call any of it iconic. 

Your brand is very visual and you use all the social media for promoting and even creating the pieces. Why?

Isn’t everybody like that in 2020? I guess maybe some designers focus more on shapes and touch-feel and opposed to that, mine would be considered more visual. I am a visual artist. So my brain creates naturally in that direction. But now that you mention this, it could be interesting to focus at some point on other aspects.

Regarding social media, I don’t really see it as promoting. I’m just casually sharing my work as I do with my jewellery line, paintings, art installation and so on. It’s just a medium I use to conglomerate my work. It just so happens to also work as a shopping platform.

The biggest challenge for a designer nowadays is… 

That’s quite a tricky question because of so many personal aspects of it. As a designer you can choose to freelance, be an entrepreneur or be employed. And depending on your career choices, challenges do differ. I started out as a freelancer and I had big issues with cashing in when the project was done. So I gave that up when I got recruited to work for a tech company as a lead product designer and later on as a team member in the product design department at Karim Rashid, so at that time my challenges circled around being a team player and juggling projects for big players and companies. Now as an entrepreneur I can say that it’s a more complex state of being but it comes with the reward of choosing what you want to put out there and present as your work. I don’t think I answered the question in a way that could be meaningful to anybody, but what I can say for sure is that the challenges relate directly to who you are as a person, as in any domain.

And on a bigger scale, challenges a designer faces, honestly technically speaking there aren’t many. You have your very capable software, you digital platforms where your work can be found, you have technology and new materials. It’s a great time to be a designer and shape the Now.

We need fashion in our life because… 

I think we as humans have some sort of identity correlation embodied in the choices we make in terms of garments. Our brains want to make fashion choices from a different number of reasons. Even when you don’t make a choice in fashion, that also sends a message. So somehow it does feel like it is linked to our idea of who we are and how others perceive us. 

About Tammy Lovin we should know… 

Fashion and jewellery are new additions to my career. I work as a product designer and installations artist, and I was formally trained and educated in this field of work. I have a bachelor in industrial design and a master in ceramics glass and metal. And everything else there is to know, I share it on my Insta account @tammylovin_ . 

READ ALSO: