An Inspired Chat with Viktoria Marchev of Manhattan

We recently had the chance to connect with Viktoria Marchev and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Viktoria, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
Creating. That’s the ultimate way for me to expand time, even though you can say it flies by so easily, but at the same time I feel when I am doing something creative my days are longer in a good way and more worthwhile, it feels I have achieved a lot. While other times days can slip by and they are just another day.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am a fashion designer experimenting with innovative technologies. In the past 10 years I have been working with silicone rubber and created sci-fi ambience looks for women or I would say many of the looks can be considered gender-neutral. I do consider silicone to be my signature material even though I am open to working with a lot of different techniques and fabrics. I love dressing women as Barbies, Comic Book Characters, Seductresses, Warriors just to mention the theme of some of my recent collections. All in all I just want the wearer to feel bold, unapologetic, sexy and timeless.

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
You know I have been searching for this answer for quite a while. I do feel that what I am doing now, is really who I am and I try to rediscover memories from my childhood where it was obvious. There are not many though, so I think that I must have been quite far off course in the first 20 years of my life. Even though maybe one thing that was always present was drawing, and that is something that sticked with me before and besides my brand too. Throughout my life actually I almost always earned money with drawing, as a graphic designer. I remember that as a kid I had this sense that I must be good at drawing and when something didn’t come out right I felt so foreign to myself, as if it was a knowledge I forgot. So I always try to find occasions when I can come back to this.

What did suffering teach you that success never could?
I don’t quite believe that you definitely need to suffer and you cannot learn from success. I have heard this before a lot of times, but I think it is a choice, you can learn from either of them. Once I think I heard someone saying that for some reason we as human beings are a perverted species who prefer to evolve in less advantageous circumstances, even though there would be ways to do otherwise. And that’s what I believe in more, that you could choose to be motivated by positive things, but most of us decide to wait until something bad happens that will eventually push us into the right direction, causing much more bitterness, but the first few “encouragements” you receive are actually very subtle and gentle and we often choose to ignore them. I am actually trying to improve this skill of mine on how to hear this inner whisper better/earlier or even more how to act upon it faster.

But, nevertheless I am sure I can share some lessons I learned from “suffering” without implying that it couldn’t have been learnt from success.

I very often feel that certain decisions need to be made, it can be within my brand or about my personal life, and many times these are decisions that require a leap of faith, they are not unattainable, but they are just a bit beyond my comfort zone, that makes it a bit difficult to say yes to. Many times I shared my unconventional thoughts about such decisions with people who were not meant to understand it, they say the dream is put in your heart so you cannot blame others for not seeing it. So I feel many times when you are asking for opinion especially from people who have never done something like what you are planning to do, they will just reflect your own hesitation. And you should have just gone ahead to begin with. And once you don’t, life will call you again, and again, I really feel the first few calls are very gentle, but when you keep ignoring it by making up excuses you will hurt yourself, you will feel stuck, depleted and eventually you will need to do what you could have done easier earlier but this time it will cost you more. So what I learnt is that the earlier I make the decision I clearly feel I need to make, I just do it. And it has brought me beautiful experiences in my life.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
I think they would agree that I find it important to stay true to myself. They would possibly agree too that I am a kind person or at least they say it a lot. This is not something that I actually try to be honestly, I never put it in my to-do list, but it is just much harder for me to be mean than not, even when certain situations are asking for it. But what I do have as an endeavor that might translate as kindness is to show people that if they are loved they can improve better. I don’t believe in criticizing others and pointing out their flaws. What I believe in is that by wanting to see the good in people they will want to show you and develop further the good in them.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: If you knew you had 10 years left, what would you stop doing immediately?
The funny/scary thing is recently I have been thinking a lot that there was much less time left than 10 years, and it gives me a certain urgency and focus. But let’s try it with 10 years.
I wouldn’t stop those of my bad habits that sometimes help or improve my mood, like drinking too much coffee or eating sweets. If I have 10 years left anyway, this is not going to make a huge difference, but I want to enjoy what is left. 🙂 And I do enjoy both of these.
I think this goes back to an earlier question, I would try to stop postponing decision-making even more, given I really don’t have much time left and there are way too many things I want to do in my life. So looking from this perspective, I think I would try to radically minimize the time I am spending with questioning myself and my inner voice.

Image Credits
All photos from London Fashion Week with Oxford Fashion Studio at Devonshire Square this season, September 21st, 2025

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Runway Photography: iMaxTree
Models: Laura Arumugam, Hannah Michael, Sandra Ganitskaya, Ami Benton, Ceci Zhang, Xofia Harmony

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Backstage Photography: Ilona Balon
Model: Sandra Ganitskaya

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Runway Photography: Andy He
Model: Sandra Ganitskaya
Model: Hannah Michael