Designer Profile

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Lisa Aviva has always had a tempestuous relationship with fashion. From her early rebellious years when she sewed doll clothes out of Kleenex, to her later years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago – where she was told by a nameless director of the fashion department, “You make clothes for an in-crowd, for artists. No one in the fashion world is going to understand you.” She has continued to do the unexpected.

Though Lisa’s love of fashion is genetic – her grandmother was a gifted seamstress and later owned several dress stores – Lisa has always felt torn between a love for conceptual fine art and the more practical world of Ready To Wear. Throughout her years at the School of the Art Institute (where she received a four year merit scholarship), Lisa constructed clothing with a variety of media – including: hula hoops, shell casings, corn cobs and even pig intestine. Always sculptural (never practical!), Lisa played with texture, space, movement and shape.

Years of experimentation eventually lead to a desire to create wearable art – strongly influenced by her aunt, Janet Lipkin, a founder of the “Art To Wear” movement. Having “played” enough and with a Bachelor of Fine Arts under her belt, Lisa was ready to get serious about fashion. Pursuing an education at the Fashion Institute of Technology, she began developing concepts for a line of men’s apparel and accessories.

Aviva Underpants, launching its first wholesale collection for Fall 2007, is the culmination of years of playing with the Elements and Principals of Design, as they apply to both the fashion and fine art worlds. Lisa’s designs are strongly conceptual, toying with accepted rules of design and turning them upside down. Lisa’s work is always playful, made evident by her company’s name: Aviva Underpants, “The truth is – I sold everything but my underpants to launch the line.” Lisa Aviva says.

Despite pleas to change the name of her company – Lisa enjoys seeing her male customers blush when they understand the origins of the name - Lisa says, “I intend always to challenge the wearer to question that which is accepted as impossible.” Like her logo, Lisa clearly thinks outside the box. “Who wants to do what everyone else is doing?” she says.