Author: Nia Kuchava

For more than 30 years, the Kutaisi-based fashion house “Marionella” has been creating wedding, festive, and traditional clothing, offering customers structurally strong dresses that are perfectly tailored to them and their tastes. Behind such long-lasting dominance in the Georgian fashion industry is a technically complex and labor-intensive, yet at the same time interesting, creative process that determines both the structural quality of the final product and conveys the designer’s individual vision and the consumer’s emotional connection to each dress. In this dynamic, it is especially important that no stage and no episode of creating a dress is seen as a separate, fragmented part, but as a single whole resulting from the consistent, integrated work of designers, technologist-tailors, and artists, and which requires constant dialogue. According to Marina Ugulava, one of the founders of “Marionella,” a wedding dress turns from a sketch into reality; however, during the construction and sewing stages, each member of the “Marionella” team takes into account both the final appearance of the dress and the technical details and engineering behind its creation. As the “Marionella” team tells us, each of these stages is, in turn, a stream of thought and ongoing research for them – a challenge they meet with great interest. The creation of each dress is an attempt to harmoniously combine its shape, structural details, realistic and well-founded technical methods, and the semantic meaning given to it by its creators and the wearer. These efforts, as well as the historical blending and mutual influences between “Marionella” as a uniquely Kutaisi fashion house and the city from which it originates, are explored in “Marionella,” where they often emphasize that the brand’s identity was uniquely formed by the environment in which it emerged and absorbed the tasteful characteristics and demands of Kutaisi fashion.

The history of “Marionella” dates back to 1993, although its philosophy was shaped much earlier, against the background of its founders’ development – Marina Ugulava and Lela Turdzeladze’s relationship with fashion. As Marina Ugulava shares, the identity of “Marionella” as a brand is rooted in childhood-a childhood dream and a constant desire to find a material expression of their aspirations and visions in a “gray” environment. The context in which “Marionella” was created was quite difficult: a society facing economic hardship and various social and political dilemmas was also experiencing a crisis of personal identity. It was especially hard to express individual attitudes and visions in a tangible way, and to find the capital and opportunities needed for this. However, as they tell us, Kutaisi has always been characterized by a special curiosity for new things and for people who emerged from within the city and expressed their identity, feelings, protests, or inner emotions through their creativity. This is how “Marionella,” which at first glance appeared “gray” before a society focused mostly on social rather than personal priorities, came to be a brand led by the dream and desire of two people, showing that clothes suited to the context could still be much bolder and carry a specific message and meaning.

Accordingly, we cannot talk about “Marionella” without speaking about the history and, most importantly, the culture of Kutaisi. In conflict with the original monotony of Kutaisi culture, in dialogue with its internal attitudes and culturally shaped visions, and later in step with the development of its own characteristics, the ideological and conceptual directions of “Marionella” evolved. This eventually resulted in a very successful business venture that grew even further and was no longer limited to the geographical context of Kutaisi, although it still shares its identity with it. These influences are also mutual, because in turn, “Marionella’s” creative style and the uniqueness of its collections set new fashion trends in Kutaisi. It is especially important that “Marionella” finds tangible inspiration in the trends of European and American fashion houses and their innovations -not to simply repeat them, but to position itself within the international fashion world, find its own place, and offer consumers relevant changes while taking these trends into account. Therefore, “Marionella” also serves as a point of contact with international trends for the Georgian fashion sphere. This is why, when we talk about influence, the Kutaisi fashion context and the innovative style offered by “Marionella” to Georgian fashion have always been closely connected and have brought mutual challenges both to the brand itself and to Georgian fashion as a whole.

Today, Marionella specializes mainly in creating wedding dresses, and its orientation in developing future collections is based entirely on the wishes and trust of its customers. In terms of foreign recognition and connections, Marionella is constantly receiving new opportunities for development and for gaining unique knowledge. At a time when Georgian fashion lacked the necessary theoretical and practical expertise, according to Marina Ugulava, the Marionella team consistently tried to learn from foreign experience. The goal of exchange projects and similar opportunities was precisely to combine the details and authentic forms shaped by global narratives, and this remains an ongoing process today. Marionella is the recipient of numerous foreign grants and awards, and the sharing of knowledge is also reflected in the positive evaluations they constantly receive from representatives of foreign fashion houses. Speaking about the future, Marionella notes that the ideas and themes of their collections directly depend on consumer wishes and trends. In addition to creative work, Marionella should also be viewed as a successful business whose management and development have strong potential. In this regard, the founders of Marionella feel confident, as their family members are continuing their studies at leading universities in the USA, receiving an education directly in business management and administration. Therefore, the prospect of constant development and expansion for Marionella is quite realistic, because the formula for future success remains very similar to the original vision. The idea and initiative continue to be supported by the practice of adapting foreign experience to the local context and creating a synthesis that is attractive for both the Georgian and the international fashion spheres.