All About: AL Bridal Couture
Irish-born brand AL Bridal Couture was created by Audra Levinskaite. Each piece is designed to drape with elegance, offering a refreshing and modern choice to appeal to fashion-forward brides. We find out more about the ‘Lotus Collection’ and why clothes which hold great sentiment are so important to Audra.
We spoke with designer Audra Levinskaite to find out more.
Tell us how you fell in love with the bridal industry and how AL Bridal Couture has developed over the years.
When I was very young, my mum made beautiful clothes in a local fashion house. I was always surrounded with unusual fabrics, embroidery and creative people. My mum passed her years of experience on to me throughout the years and my passion for fashion design grew from here. AL Bridal Couture started in college: before I knew it, it was AL Bridal Couture! I fell in love with costume design and after receiving my double degrees I worked in a multitude of design expressive spaces. After years of working helping other designers fine tune their collections I decided to develop my own label, finally. I feel the mix of all these experiences has moulded and developed my design aesthetic.
What is the creative process like? Can you also tell us more about your studio and creative space?
My creative process usually starts when I’m away on holiday and I have a moment for myself. I love nature and exploring the world. When you are surrounded by nature or architecture from different cultures, the ideas just come to me, and I start imagining how it would look and move in fabric form. I always have a small notebook with me to sketch something when the creative moment strikes! My studio is also a little piece of heaven to me. It’s calm and has beautiful natural sunlight shines through two large windows. Even on a rainy or cloudy day, the space has a feeling of air. The perfect space for finishing my designing process.
Can you tell us more about the ‘Lotus’ collection? What spurred these designs on? Who or what would you say are your key influences for this collection?
The Lotus Collection was inspired from a walk I had one day in a beautiful park near my home.
I was thinking about how the light filtered through the flowers and how amazing that would be to try to capture in structured form. Nature was definitely the main inspiration for this collection, every dress in the Lotus collection was named after different flowers and how I interpreted each flower I studied.
Do you have an absolute favourite gown that you’ve designed from this collection? Can you tell us some design secrets behind it?
Without a shadow of a doubt, my favourite gown from this collection is The Lotus Gown. It was the first one I made and it pushed me forward into a new creative space to design the rest of the collection. It was a very freeing moment for me to design this dress, it has everything in my opinion. Softness, structure, quality in the cut, weight in the fabric choice. Everything that I want to represent in my designs.
What sets your designs apart from others in the industry?
We all bring our own identity to our designs. I think you can really see that in the amazing bridal designers that are showcasing this year. I feel that perhaps my costume design background gives my dresses a different edge.
Do you have a signature style of your own? What’s one of your favourite things in your own wardrobe?
My signature style is very simple, clean lines with no fuss. My favourite thing in my wardrobe is an heirloom piece that I cherish. My grandmother made my mum a linen dress when she was a child, and when I had my daughter my mother gave it to me. I love that clothes can hold great sentiment in them. I know I will be able to give this heirloom to my daughter when she is grown up!
What’s one thing people don’t know about you?
I am very outgoing when I meet my brides and I love discussing all things design. I get very animated with this topic so you would never know that I am an extremely shy person!
Finally, what is your vision for the future of AL Bridal Couture?
I hope the future will be bright. I always like to think big, is there a different way?! 2024 and onwards is all about soaring to the next level. With multiple shops in Ireland taking on my first collection to great reception, my main goal now is to build on these important relationships we already have and to meet and add new UK and Europe stockists to our AL Bridal Couture family.
