When Camelia Skikos was a teenager, she experienced the jeans envy that is familiar to middle-schoolers everywhere. But her challenge in owning the right pair of 501s was complicated; in communist Romania, jeans simply weren't available unless you knew someone who knew someone. A friend was able to buy a pair on the black market, so Skikos - as well as most of the other girls in the neighborhood - shared a single pair.
She couldn't have imagined that just 15 years later, she'd be designing custom Levi's for celebrities at the company's San Francisco headquarters.
"In Romania, it seemed a dream to have a pair," she remembers. "But to design for them? That was impossible."
It's a stark contrast, and a theme that's reflected in her work for her eponymous fashion label, whether it's between materials (silk and neoprene), colors (orange and blue) or tailoring (sharp and soft). Since leaving Levi's to launch her independent label in 2009, Skikos has become known for architectural shapes and a restrained hand that hark back to the uniforms of her youth.
"My collections always express a little bit of the tension between something that is more constricted and controlled and something less inhibited and free," the 38-year-old designer says.
Her line is carried at Eva New York and at San Francisco's Wonderland and 440 Brannan. In October, she hosted a trunk show showing her spring collection at Neiman Marcus.
Skikos grew up in Iasi, one of the largest cities in Romania, with her software programmer mother, electrician father and a younger brother. The country had been under communist rule since 1948. There were no jeans, no private companies and no fashion designers. Despite limitations on what she was allowed to do, say, read, watch and wear, Skikos remembers a happy childhood - although she was often sent home from school for "customizing" her bright blue uniform.
When the regime was overthrown in 1989, she says, it was like an "explosion of creativity."
"Once the Iron Curtain was off," she says, "everything started from zero - it was very powerful."
Having always been creative and fond of drawing, she studied the architecture, sculpture and graphic design that are recognizable in her work today. She began studying fashion design when it was offered and graduated from Iasi's University of Art with a degree in fashion design in 1999. After graduation, she designed Italian denim for Romanian production company Bocca but soon moved to London and learned the technicalities of the fashion industry working for a few fashion companies.
And then, quite serendipitously, she discovered she'd won a lifetime green card; unknown to her, a friend had entered her in a visa lottery. She decided to move to San Francisco in 2003.
"I heard that the headquarters of Levi's are here and felt really lucky to be in the same city," she says. She showed them her sketches and was hired as a head designer in the customization department. Soon, she was making customized jeans for people who came from all over the world to have original Levi's. The members of the band Blondie would get them every time they came into town for a concert. "We became friends after a while," Skikos says. "It was pretty interesting to meet all those people."
"I could tell she was trained in the right way," says Simon Ungless, director of the School of Fashion at San Francisco's Academy of Art University, where she has taught on and off since 2004. "Her style was design driven and had not been driven by a contemporary mass market company."
When working to develop her own look - quite a departure from designer denim - Skikos says it was intuitive.
"It just comes instinctually," she says of her trademark structural outerwear and dresses. "It happens without even realizing it."
"She has a great sense of her own personal style," Ungless says. "A beautiful line and sense of color and graphics."
Over time, she's learned to refine her fit to create pieces that maintain her conceptual signature but are more practical, which can mean the difference between critical aplomb and profit-garnering wearability.
For her spring 2014 collection, she used prints for the first time, collaborating with Serbian visual artist Milos Vlaski to develop kaleidoscopic patterns in vibrant oranges and blues that suggest, in part, contrasting elements of fire and water.
Vlaski, who has a film background, says that working with her was like working with a director. "She is awesome," he says. "She guided every part of the creative process, accepting inputs but being very firm in the final vision."
When it came time for Skikos to design her fall-winter 2014 collection, she went on a long walk from her hilly San Francisco neighborhood, something she loves to do. It was her 10th year living in the city, and the final designs reference the streets, intersections and neighborhoods of a city that she has come to know well.
"Fashion can give a great amount of freedom," Skikos says. "No matter what times we live in, it can allow people to be who they want to be."
Maghan McDowell is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mmcdowell@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @maghanmcd
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