Just Be True: Viktor Spasov on Designing, Styling and Building a Language in Sofia

16 hours ago

4 min read

The Ceremony of Form is a fashion editorial photographed by Florin Opris and Teodor Roșu with model Isabela Haiduc of Unique Models Agency Romania, styled by Viktor Spasov and produced by Feeric Fashion Week. Shot among steel staircases, brick façades and walkways, it pairs designer pieces with strong architecture, in colour and in black and white. It is one of the twenty editorials in MALVIE MAIN ISSUE 72, the 190-page, perfect-bound November 2026 main issue of MALVIE Magazine.

MALVIE MAIN ISSUE 72 open at the first pages of Just Be True: Viktor Spasov on Designing, Styling and Building a Language in Sofia, beside the printed cover

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Viktor Spasov: the interview

Isabela Haiduc in a long black coat over a sheer white dress on a steel staircase, in black and white

You move between designing your own collections and styling other people. How does each role change the way you see clothing, and does one ever push back against the other?

Designing and styling are two different ways of communicating through clothing, but for me, they are deeply connected. When I design, I start with an idea, a feeling, or a world I want to create. Styling is more immediate and intuitive, it requires me to respond to a person, a character, or a specific moment. Designing makes me more conscious of construction, silhouette, and detail, while styling encourages me to experiment and see familiar pieces in unexpected ways.

Sometimes the two roles challenge each other, but I think that tension is productive. It keeps my approach from becoming too fixed and allows me to constantly reconsider what clothing can do.

Your work treats fashion as a form of self-expression. When you dress an artist or actor, how do you balance their identity with your own visual language?

I always begin by trying to understand the person and what they want to communicate, both consciously and subconsciously. I don’t believe styling should erase someone’s identity or simply turn them into a visual concept. For me, the most interesting result happens when their personality and my own vision meet somewhere in the middle. I bring my perspective through the proportions, the textures, the combinations, and the overall atmosphere, but the person wearing the clothes needs to feel themselves in them.

Across four collections, what has stayed constant in your design thinking, and what have you had to let go of along the way?

What has stayed is my interest in individuality, identity, and the emotional side of clothing, that has remained constant. I’m drawn to pieces that carry a certain tension — between strength and vulnerability, structure and freedom, or something familiar and something unexpected. At the same time, my approach has become more intuitive. In the beginning, I felt a stronger need to explain every idea and make sure everything followed a particular direction.

With experience, I’ve learned that not everything needs to be resolved or made obvious. Sometimes the most interesting part of a design is what remains open to interpretation. I’ve become more comfortable with uncertainty and with allowing each collection to teach me something new.

Model in a studded dark dress leaning on a steel column in shadow, in black and white

Building a brand in Sofia comes with its own conditions. How has the city shaped your aesthetic, and what does it give you that a bigger fashion capital might not?

Sofia has shaped my approach in ways that are both practical and personal. Building a brand here means learning to be resourceful, independent, and intentional about the decisions a person makes. You don’t always have the same infrastructure or immediate access to the opportunities that exist in larger fashion capitals, but that also encourages finding alternative solutions and develop a more individual perspective.

I appreciate the distance from the constant pressure of established fashion systems and trends. It gives me space to experiment, question things, and build a language that feels authentic to me. Sofia is also a city of contrasts, and I think that mixture of different realities and influences naturally finds its way into my work.

Your designs have appeared in publications as different as L’Officiel and KALTBLUT. How do you think about your work being read through such different editorial lenses?

I find it interesting because I don’t think a garment has only one meaning. The way a piece is photographed, styled, and placed within an editorial story can completely change how it is perceived. Different publications have their own visual language, audiences, and ways of approaching fashion, and I enjoy seeing how my work adapts to those contexts without necessarily losing its identity.

I don’t expect every publication to interpret my work in the same way, and I don’t think they should. For me, fashion becomes more interesting when it creates a conversation between the original idea and the person who is looking at it. Sometimes an interpretation reveals something about the work that I hadn’t consciously considered myself.

At 31, you already have awards and high-profile collaborations behind you. What kind of work do you want to be known for ten years from now?

Ten years from now, I would like to still be myself, not changed by money or trends/fads, fame or whatever else there is. I would like to still create, whether the idea comes from my mind or my heart, just be true.