Annamária Kaptay is a true Renaissance woman—in the good sense of the word—always full of energy and ideas. She holds trainings and yoga classes with a creative approach, she builds a community, plays music, paints, and last year, during the lockdown, she launched her sustainable activewear brand. Her personal brand encompassing various different activities is authentic, infused with local associations and very up-to-date.
“I have always dreaded the thought of choosing a single thing as my vocation and having it fill my entire life. I am fascinated by too many things to do that. I also apply a creative approach to sports and training: for example, a dynamic yoga flow unfolding to the beat of a perfectly chosen track absolutely amounts to dance or movement art. Thus, music is connected to movement, and movement is connected to appearance: this is how the brand, and mostly, the activewear collection is related to it. Clothing design and painting also inspire each other. I think if we stay honest and true to ourselves in what we do, we don’t have to worry whether or not we become successful,” Annamari told us.
Her muses are strong, passionate women who are in perfect balance with themselves, such as the female members of her family. In the course of designing, she turns to the colors, shapes, materials, movements and people of her everyday life, which then she adapts into a bold and colorful visual language. Already as a child, she used to dress extraordinarily and oddly compared to her peers, yet she never questioned her own taste for a second. With her bold color combinations, she aspires to convey this self-confidence and the feeling of unlimited joy to the wearers of the brand’s pieces, who are often the members of the community built through the sports activities. “The panther figure, the logo of the brand, also symbolizes this power, momentum, freedom, passion and beauty. All the things we imagine ourselves or would love to imagine ourselves to be, while we do sports. At the same time, if you look at the logo from up close, there is also some playfulness in it with the panther’s crooked legs. It is deliberately imperfect and this is what gives its beauty,” the designer added.
Annamari places a particular emphasis on sustainable manufacturing and encouraging the audience to buy consciously. Her first sweatshirt collection, which proved to be an instant hit, was made in collaboration with Plant a Tree: a tree is planted after every purchase in the name of the buyer, the number of which is embroidered on the sweatshirt’s sleeve. This way, you’ll know exactly that baby tree No. 123 is yours in the line. Each and every piece of her second yoga wear collection dubbed Glamazon and her swimwear line unveiled over the past days is made of fully recycled materials produced of ocean waste and other similar materials, including the label and the packaging. On top of that, each piece is manufactured in Budapest or its vicinity. “I consider it important to know who worked on the products. For example, the merino wool hats of the winter collection were hand-knitted by my aunt,” Annamari highlighted.
The pieces of her brand new swimwear collection are jazzed up by funny slogans written in Hungarian. “In addition to my usual color fetish, I wanted them to convey messages which the majority of our generation can relate to. I love seeing a whole bunch of different people thinking the same thing, feeling the same thing and experiencing the same nostalgic romance when they see the »bal elöl…« (meaning »at the front, to the left« in Hungarian) print, for example. A collective social wink, that binds the young layers of society together. It was when my mother asked me what the text meant when I realized how much a generational message this was. It’s like explaining a joke—it makes no sense that way. The »erre bezzeg volt pénz« (meaning »for this there is money« in Hungarian) is less generation-specific, it is, perhaps, more of a Hungarian thing. I am fond of these little social gags,” Annamari explained.
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