Fashion designer spins ideas nonstop

Posted on May 14, 2008 
Filed Under fashion news

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Galina Mihaleva wasnt supposed to be here. Not “here on Earth” here, but here in a Marshall Way arts district boutique dressed wall to wall with couture garments. This inviting, loft-style space wasnt supposed to bear her name on its window.

“In Bulgaria it is already decided what you are going to go to school for,” says the curly-headed 44-year-old from the European country that borders the Black Sea. “I was supposed to go to a math program. But my aunt brought a brochure for art school and said, ‘Look at her, she is always drawing, she is so creative. Finally my mother agreed to let me go.”

Mihaleva was 13. By then, the family had been hiding scissors and pencils from her for years, foiling her efforts to clip squares of fabric from her mothers dresses and sketch pictures on any available surface.

“I loved textures, from the earliest age. I always loved to feel fabric,” she says. Her grandmother taught her to sew, she says, “before (I) learned to read.”

Today Mihaleva is a prolific fashion designer, fabricating dresses, tops, pants and coats for clients at her Scottsdale boutique, Galina Couture. She has presented collections to Oscar de la Renta, Nicole Miller, Neiman Marcus, Liz Claiborne and Henri Bendel. Last year, she won Spanish-language televisions “Project Runway: Ecuador,” a fashion-design contest similar to the hit Bravo series of the same name. More…

PHOENIX FASHONISTA: Galina Mihaleva designs one-of-a-kind garments at her Scottsdale boutique, Galina Couture. Opening the shop has been the realization of a dream for the Bulgarian-born fashion designer, who renovated the space with the help of her nephew. Its walls, ceiling and floor are decorated with her own sketches and paintings.

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