Thank you very much for this wonderful recognition. My name is Viktoria Marchev, and I am a fashion designer. Before—and alongside—my fashion design career, I worked as a graphic designer, creating brand identities for companies. So, it felt like a natural progression to design all the visuals for my own fashion brand as well.

I create collections once or twice a year, showcase them at Fashion Weeks, and art direct the campaigns. For each collection, I also design a lookbook that includes all the key milestones related to that season.

I am happy to say that I’ve had good experiences so far. As a fashion designer, I’ve won multiple design awards. When I saw the opportunity to apply for the MUSE Creative Awards, I wanted to submit something I hadn’t submitted before—something I felt was truly award-worthy. I’m very happy to see that the design jury felt the same way.

The lookbook, created as marketing material for the S/S 2023 PINK FLOW collection, reflects the overall joyful ambience of the silicone pieces I designed. I work with liquid silicone rubber to design and create garments that usually evoke a futuristic world. This time, however, I focused on the playfulness of the material, creating Barbie-themed pink, blue, and translucent pieces with heart shapes and flamingo patterns.

For the campaign photo shoot, the playful yet futuristic environment of a bubble tea shop helped highlight all the qualities in the pieces I was eager to express. The lookbook includes photos from the shoot, my digital sketches, and look shots on a mannequin.

At the time, I was in a phase of my life where I had to make a lot of responsible decisions and was working in a corporate environment that lacked color. I believe I needed to create something colorful, joyful, and feminine to restore balance in my life. And I believe we all need that kind of balance from time to time.

First of all, I’m very grateful that this project was received so well—it's truly a great honor. I feel that, while the lookbook itself isn’t long, it has many layers. The different elements were created in stages: the sketches, the garments, the two types of photo shoots—on location and in the studio—took place months apart. Once every element was finalized, I had a lot of valuable material to work with.

The campaign photos invite you into a fun, imaginative world where such playful fashion pieces could possibly be worn every day—this is the fantasy aspect. At the same time, the lookbook offers technical details and a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the design process. It also presents the garments in a neutral, white background in still form, so you can clearly see the details without distraction.

The photos were taken by my husband, Dobrin Marchev. His work is always clean and straight to the point, which I believe is essential for successfully presenting my designs.

Now that the world is moving toward all things digital, it’s natural to question the importance of producing printed lookbooks. You can view photos on social media and even flip through digital books online. The biggest challenge I had to overcome was the question of whether a printed version was even necessary.

While I’m personally very enthusiastic about digital technology, I believe that a physical lookbook remains a powerful form of presentation. It offers a more immersive, guided experience. These lookbooks aren’t mass-produced—they’re distributed exclusively to a targeted audience, with the hope that they’ll become part of the recipient’s personal collection of books and magazines.

Another challenge was having the courage to begin, even when I didn’t feel I had the financial resources to fully realize my vision—especially when it came to the photoshoot and printing costs. But in the end, everything came together.

Winning an award is always a strong marketing message that helps you connect with your audience. It positions your work and reinforces their commitment to your brand as fans. It also often draws media attention and contributes to future opportunities.

And of course, it validates the effort you put into your work—effort that’s necessary regardless—but being recognized on such a prominent platform definitely makes upcoming challenges feel easier to face.

The collection for which the lookbook was created as the marketing material won an award in design, so it was nice to build on that win and mention that this time the lookbook received a Gold—so this collection is a double winner. My social media followers were very supportive, and at a recent fashion event, I was introduced as a multiple award-winning designer, without me even writing a description about myself.

You always have a vision in your mind for your projects. Usually, it's big and terrifying. You feel that you don't have the resources—whether financial, time-related, or something else. But the truth is, you just have to start.

Your job is to keep that vision very alive in your mind and try to make reality as close to it as possible. That’s the only thing you need to focus on. And if you’ve done everything with that in mind and you’re happy with the result, then find the right platform to submit it to.

Artificial Intelligence is becoming inevitable at this point. I haven't dived into it in depth just yet, but I believe we’ve reached a point as humanity where mastering it is your only chance to stay current. Not because what you create without it isn’t powerful, but because, given the pace at which our world is developing, the help you can receive from AI can accelerate your workflow to the point where you can focus on the parts of your project that can really only be made by you.

While there are many contradictions surrounding the application of AI, I think it helps us redefine what it means to be human—what things are left that can only be done by humans. And that’s what we should focus on.

I think you need to have good presentation material outside of the competition to begin with. Presentation, nowadays, when everything is so visual, is of outstanding importance.

So, you have to start there before even thinking of entering a competition. When I worked for other brands, it was a big task for me to convince my clients that they needed unique imagery. Then, I would art direct photo shoots, and sometimes it took a lot of persuading to help them understand the benefits of such an investment. But it is of primary significance.

You need to have a clear vision and descriptions of your project, even while you're working on it. Once you have all of these, it’s more about willpower—to sit down and organize them in the format the competition requires. It takes time and effort, and of course, there's no guarantee that you'll win. But once you submit your work, you're one step closer to winning.

You don’t have to worry about what happens next, but you do have to make sure you did your best at the moment. Refine the presentation where you can, step back a few times, and try to view it as an external judge would. Consider if there’s anything else you could add to make the presentation more striking, and then act based on the answers to those questions.

As I mentioned earlier, having the presentation as clear and attractive as it turned out is definitely something I can be grateful for. I owe it to Dobrin Marchev, the photographer, who is the force behind 5-6 of my most recent campaigns and 3-4 of my behind-the-scenes studio photos, as well as the models Samantha Brown and Gianna Mina.

I also want to thank the makeup artist Toby Klinger, with whom I’ve worked on 3-4 campaigns and a fashion show, and the location, M Tea in Flushing, New York, which had the perfect interior design for our project.

A joyful printed experience that brings you into the world of pink and heart-shaped silicone fashion, featuring signature looks from designer Viktoria Marchev.

I believe this captures the key elements you need to know at first glance: it’s a printed medium, it’s about a joyful fashion collection, and it’s made of the material the designer considers her signature.

I have two new collections that don’t have lookbooks yet, and I just showcased my most recent F/W 2025 'Dark Knightress' collection at New York Fashion Week and in San Francisco. Therefore, I have a lot of beautiful imagery to work with for my presentation materials. I am also working on a new Spring/Summer collection.