New Bulgarian University welcomes May with a variety of events within its days of artistic design and fashion. The project’s idea is students to present their work at fashion shows and installations, a performance, an exhibition, discussions, trainings and a workshop.

“At first it was something simpler, with smaller events, scattered around Sofia. However, we turned to something much bigger and looked at European models such as Design Week and Fashion Week. We have the ambition to make the whole thing international, which shouldn’t be a problem,” says Prof. Boris Serginov from the Design Dept. of NBU.

Bulgarians Vesela Stanoeva from Design Academy Eindhoven and designer Kina Bogdanova, working in Ravenna are toattend the events. Their task is to recreate the Bulgarian alphabet with a mosaics technique from Ravenna and with handmade paper.

There will be also a land art festival, which will take place on the beach of Coral at the Black Sea.

“The Coral area, known by the community as a spot, endangered by overdevelopment is the place where we exhibit on the beach itself,” the professor goes on to say. “Thus the beauty of the spot will be displayed and also the fact that it must not be destroyed. This is the third event over a period of three years in a row and together with the Let’s Save Coral society we manage to stop the appetites of entrepreneurs. The society’s role is much bigger than ours, but when we transfer our exhibitions from the beach to Sofia we succeed in ceasing a great share of this crying shame. This is not environmentalism only, but social responsibility as well – it is socially responsible design, which serves not only as decoration, but also as a social tool, a weapon that provokes, one way or another.”

Long-year tutor at the NBU Eng. Tatyana Georgieva manages the May days of fashion for a second time:

‘As of last year we try to gather all our events of the Fashion bachelor program within the frameworks of a month,” she says. “We also have two master programs – Fashion and Business Strategies and Styling. Each year we hold a fashion master class with different designers. We had it in April this year, under the guidance of famous young Bulgarian fashion designer Evgenia Popova, who sells not only in Bulgaria, but around the world too.”

The work of the students will be displayed in Paris, which is essential for the future fashion designers. In the meantime the sophisticated space of Vogue Vision Academy has hosted the May fashion days since May 3.

One different point of view, regarding artistic design, presented by Nikolay Tabakov:

“I have been into the business with handmade lamps as of 7 – 8 years, trying to develop and establish my own trademark. I think that the Lamps of Nikolay Tabakov line is quite distinguished in Bulgaria now. Online researches have shown that no such lamps are made anywhere else. I want to talk to the students about my idea and how I have made it here and abroad, despite the difficulties – each year I make exhibitions and participate in workshops across Europe. I would like to inspire those guys!”

English version: Zhivko Stanchev​