I am Christoph, a fashion designer, a poet, one of the Silver Needle nominees this year. My creation is always concept-based and with dragging backgrounds that are tricky to open with the usual catwalk show format. From the urge to bring the fashion experiencer closer to how I see opportunities, solutions and why I make decisions the way I've done it, I contacted elektron.art to talk about it all the night before it all goes live on stage. Honestly and openly, warm and in a slowed down mode.

It is an honor to be a Silver Needle nominee and to have the heightened platform that accompanies it, inspired by this spirit I decided that 1) I want me to be able to be me in a calm manner and explain my position as a fashion designer-poet as well as 2) to give more of myself than creation and to share my platform with Peaasi, an organization that values mental health. As an overview, my upcoming collection "Surviving The Day" at Tallinn Fashion Week is a collection of moments, feelings and lines of poetry related to the repetitive sense of how one just “has to survive the day”.

I feel burned out, stressed and emotionally misplaced as a creator. I continue to delay dealing with myself so that I can deal with my own creative work and it doesn't really work as a sustainable solution. I feel it is very important for similarly overworked, stressed out and emotionally lost individuals to find guidance on how to find beauty again in a day. The proceeds of the upcoming artist talk I want, precisely because of this, to donate to Peaasi – Peahea counseling, which focuses on young people aged 12 to 26, dealing with mental health problems from anxiety and motivation to relationship problems.

During this night at elektron.art I talk about the upcoming in art fashion and present poetry written in the process of creating the current collection. Besides that I offer home apples, and a variety of home-made lemonades from the process of making different juices during the summer – after all it is Monday. I have invited a multitalent and a good friend, Alissa Šnaider, to converse with me, so that all that needs to be said gets said out. We start and finish the evening with breathing exercises under the guidance of Gea Ashilevi to turn ourselves on or off for once by the end of the day.
After the artist talk it is also possible to acquire both of my poetry books "Artokraatia" (2016) and "TE-MA" (2020) in cash for ten euros, which I add as a donation to the whole benefit of the night.

Read more about the Peaasi – Peahea counselling: https://peaasi.ee/en/
And anyone who has the possibility to support working with the mental health problems locally can do it here: https://peaasi.ee/en/donations/