…for the avant-garde: not in film, television, architecture nor style – let alone for avant-garde designers. It’s not Tokyo, Berlin, Milan, Paris or New York – cities with intentional enigma, a breadth of culture based on the influence of painters, sculptures and fine art movements. Elsa Schiaparelli aesthetic: borrowed from surrealists; Yves St. Laurent’s, from Mondrian; Miuccia Prada’s inspired by architects. Designer Aliona Kononova, migrating to L.A. by way of her native Moldova, winding through Milan’s fashion world, then Stephen Jones’ millinery workshop in London, is L.A.’s rare living vanguard of not just art but pure creation. Treading lightly in Balenciaga pumps, traversing the town’s cultural corners in her statement architectural molds, she’s a walking invocation of the drama of Martha Graham, of silent movie queens, of Grecian goddesses, choosing to evoke over disappearing into any possible conventions. Her pieces are true statements of how fabric interacts with the body – she never starts a garment knowing what shape it will inhabit. As with all true creators, her process is a journey to a manifestation based around emotion rather than simply function. She creates and dresses from the inside out, rather than the other way around – the outer manifestation more about taking off the mask than hiding inside one.