Ethnic Fashion: Your Opinion

The word 'Ethnic' can be interpreted in many ways. Is there a specific definition of Ethnic, especially in fashion? What is Ethnic Fashion for you? We asked some for their opinions. Feel free to drop a comment and give your opinion!

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The sweet smell of success Emilio Pucci at work in 1959.

In 1964, a 3-year-old girl named Laudomia was unhappily confined to her sickbed. It was, as these things go, not a bad place to be confined; her bedroom was on the third floor of the Palazzo Pucci, a massive 14th-century villa in Florence, just behind the Duomo’s pearl-gray immensity. But she was bored and restless, and so, to cheer her up, her father, an Italian aristocrat, brought her some perfume.
Emilio Pucci
Marisa Berenson models an assortment of bags in 1965.

Gaslight Ad Archives
A 1966 ad for Vivara perfume.
A friend of his in Switzerland named Coco Chanel had suggested that he put his creativity into a scent, and he’d been working with the legendary perfumer Jean Amic.

“My father brought up some variations for me to smell,” says Laudomia, today an elegant married woman with three children of her own. “I smelled them and told him one was good, and so he launched it.” She laughs. “Which is typical of my father, a complete nutcase.

Who launches a perfume because a 3-year-old likes it?”

The nutcase was Emilio Pucci, and the perfume he launched was Vivara in 1966. Laudomia, now the image director of the house her father built, is relaunching Vivara to considerable fanfare, though this is not your mother’s perfume, as Laudomia is the first to tell you. Graced with a catlike litheness (her frame wears her father’s prints perfectly) and a lilting, British-inflected Italian accent, Laudomia is the custodian of Pucci’s past and future, which Vivara embodies perfectly. To understand that past and future, you need to understand the father and the house, and those are not simple matters.

Laudomia has called her father’s story a kind of fairy tale in reverse. In reality it was enchanted from start to finish, though in wildly different ways at different times. Here was a marchese — the Puccis had been one of the leading families in Renaissance Florence, and Emilio’s title dates from 1662 — who became a World War II air force pilot flying torpedo missions out of North Africa.

His wife would later describe his service to the Axis as simply an obligation: “He was Italian; he had to fight.”

It is a credible claim. Pucci loved America and enrolled in 1936 at Reed College in Oregon. Skiing was an obsession for him, and he designed the team’s red-and-white uniform. In 1939, he began an affair with Mussolini’s (married) daughter, Edda Ciano. The affair turned complicated in 1943 when Edda’s husband, Galeazzo Ciano, helped overthrow and briefly imprison Il Duce. Mussolini was rescued by German paratroopers and restored to power; he then had Ciano executed. When Edda tried to help him, Mussolini turned on her, placing a million-lira price on her head, in part because she possessed her husband’s diaries, which incriminated Mussolini and the Germans.

A 1966 ad for Vivara perfume.

Edda asked Pucci for assistance. In 1944, with the diaries hidden in her clothes, he smuggled her into Switzerland. She made it; he didn’t. Pucci was captured and tortured by the Nazis. When they finally turned him loose, he fled to Switzerland, where he waited out the war.

But by then he was ruined financially. The family had been quite well off, Laudomia has said, “but after the war they had nothing.” In 1946, Pucci rejoined the post-Mussolini Italian air force and was living on his military salary. The next year, he took a brief leave to ski in Zermatt. There he found himself dissatisfied with postwar ski apparel. So he simply designed some more ski clothing, this time for himself.

The clothes were stretch pants in novel synthetic fabrics and bright colors, all done in light, streamlined forms for speed and comfort. It happened that a photographer for Harper’s Bazaar was in Zermatt, and she asked Pucci if she could photograph the outfits.

She sent the photos to Diana Vreeland, who alerted a Lord & Taylor buyer, who ordered a collection. Pucci produced the clothes, and they started to sell.

Then, in 1949, in another exotic playground for the rich (this time Capri), Emilio had another moment of revelation: women, he saw, were trapped in heavy, outmoded garments.

So he started designing light, vibrant, clean-lined shantung separates, opening a store on the island. (Pucci is credited with the original capri pants.) The store, which for modesty’s sake didn’t originally use his name — “I’m the first member of my family to work in a thousand years,” he famously explained to Life magazine — was mobbed, and within a few years Pucci became a designer worn by Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall and Jacqueline Kennedy.

It is virtually impossible to exaggerate the degree to which the 1960s defined Pucci — and Pucci the ’60s. Emilio created a silk jersey knit dress, soon the jet-set uniform, whose signature print took the brightest colors from nature and scattered them like semaphores.

In 1947, he had $120 in his pocket; by 1952, he had become a millionaire. The launch of Vivara 14 years later, heralded with a film starring Catherine Deneuve, was, like everything else, a huge success.

Then the enchantment took a turn. In the 1970s, Emilio couldn’t — or, according to some, wouldn’t — reinterpret Pucci for a changing world. He had a vision, but he also had a fatal flaw: inflexibility. Stores began to close. In the late ’70s, Saks dropped the line. This was the Pucci — brilliant, lost — in which Bernard Arnault, the C.E.O. of LVMH, bought a majority share in 2000. Arnault wanted to bring the house back to glorious life as much as Laudomia did, and a new Vivara was central to the endeavor.

They began by smelling the 1966 original; it was “a green chypre,” says Francois Demachy, the senior vice president of all LVMH’s perfume brands, who remembered Vivara from his early days as a perfumer. (A chypre perfume is usually built with oak moss, patchouli and labdanum, an absolute of a dark, thick-smelling Mediterranean bush.) But, Laudomia adds, “while it felt very special, it wasn’t what I thought younger people would want to wear. And given that we were changing our fashion, our stores, our approach, we wanted to put that into our perfume as well.”

Demachy was guided by the brand universe: “Mediterranean, color, positive vibrations, radiance, with a clear elegance,” he says. One day Pucci mentioned that she loved the smell of a place in Turkey where the coast fell into the sea and the trees almost had their roots in the seawater, a mix of wood, sea breeze and fresh air, so Demachy specified patchouli and vetiver for the woody signature and certain synthetic molecules for the scent of the ocean. He kept its chypre heritage but twisted it in a modern way, finally adding galbanum to the top of the scent’s structure to make it less “tender.”

The galbanum is the key. Here is a miraculous material that is at once retro — the perfume of a woman having her hair done in a 1958 beauty salon — and, in its oddly elegant green abstractness, futuristic. Laudomia made sure of it. She had gone through draft after draft. And just as she had at age 3, Emilio’s daughter finally said, “This is the one.” (Source: By CHANDLER BURR, Published: August 26, 2007, www.nytimes.com)

Ethnic Trends in The Netherlands

Clash! Arnhem's fashion talents

Masters students from the Fashion Institute Arnhem showed their final creations at Amsterdam International Fashion Week. The show “Clash!” saw designs from young talents Lifu Hsiao, Sanne Schrijver, Julia Eichler and Claes Iversen shake up the catwalk.

Over the last one and a half years, the students worked on developing their own signature, creating high fashion at a speed and pace close to what an independent designer faces in real life. On Thursday 24 January, they presented their collections under the theme “Clash!”. The theme sums up how they felt about the course “An exciting clash with each other and within,” according to the participants.

Lifu Hsiao was born in Taiwan. After finishing his BA fashion degree at the Fu Jen University he came to Europe. His new collection presents a “1920’s lady look infused with inspiration from the streets of Amsterdam”. It resulted in clean shapes, small round shoulders and a low waist.



Sanne Schrijver designs women’s collections “It is important that clothes are wearable and nice on a woman’s body. I am always fascinated by men’s wear, it’s my inspiration for designing women’s collections.”



Julia Eichler’s collection is inspired by modern African art. “The way people in Africa use materials is the main inspiration for my collection. They recycle trash and make art out of it.”



Claes Iversen, born in Denmark, finished his BA at the Royal Academy in The Hague. His clothes are described as “twisted modern classics.” Iversen found his inspiration in “randomness, misshapes and garbage". They form the basis of the shapes in his new collection.



Golden Heel Award
Preceding the show the winner of the Sacha Golden Heel Award was announced. For this project, shoe shop Sacha and the Fashion Institute Arnhem teamed up and created a shoe design curriculum and competition. The winnner was Julia Eichler with the shoe “Anita”. She will have her shoe produced by Sacha and sold in selected Sacha shops in the Netherlands.
(Source: By Karina Smrkovsky / 25-01-2008, www.design.nl)

Bunny Catwalk Collection

From left to right:
oscar de la renta, anna sui, sonia rykiel, alice mccall, diane von furstenburg, alberta ferretti, thakoon, temperley, anna molinari, karen walker, philip lim, chanel, topshop, marc jacobs, marc by marc jacobs, matthew williamson, gucci, stella mccartney, kenzo, dolce and gabbanna, michael kors, chloe, bottega venetta, blumarine, viktor and rolf, luca luca, luella, spijkers en spijkers(Source: www.flickr.com/fifi-lapin)

CHANEL


CHLOE


GUCCI

Daryl van Wouw

Daryl van Wouw, the Netherlands

Daryl van Wouw Studio maintains its authenticity by mixing street styles and sportswear influences with a taste of couture. With a freestyle creativity and unmistakeable touch of class, Daryl van Wouw's designs show a close kinship with contemporary urban vision and vibrant "melting pot" cities like New York and Amsterdam. (Source: www.clicsitges.com)

Fashion Week: Sao Paulo

With 39 shows and a growing international presence, Sao Paulo Fashion Week is the biggest fashion event in Latin America. Vivienne Westwood was there to kick off the event.


Alexandre Herchcovitch
Herchcovitch is one of Brazil's most successful fashion exports, and he makes his mark by riding the alternative side of design. For instance, his models wore men's dress shoes turned into stilettos with slightly upturned toes and other similar variations. The clothes themselves—like men's suits turned feminine with long, narrow lapels—were highly tomboyish but smacked of raw sensuality.

A palette of petals: Dries van Noten

Prints lounge upon the body and skim the skin softly, the way that petals flutter in the breeze. Clothes slip from the shoulders, slide over the hips, caress the breasts and thighs. The pieces move naturally. Like flowers in a garden, these dresses, skirts and blouses seem alive. Who could resist such floral creations? Who could resist the woman who wears them?

The fabric that Dries van Noten uses in his designs is the product of his own imaginary greenhouse. Patterns grow organically in his mind, sprouting from an image collected here, a sensation gathered there. His palette is tropical, his form ethnic. Was that a movement of a sari? A sarong? a kimono? International influences such as these might result in a quaint or even rural print, but van Noten knows how to transform the traditional into the contemporary. In his hands, florals become decisively modern.

The fashion-forward graphic designs of his prints depends on multiple contrasts, the way that the bright colour of a woman's lipstick contrasts with the pale blue of her eyes, her matt skin, her chocolate hair. The colors and forms go together, but not simplistically so. The border upon the hem is silver, the bodice saffron, the flowers collected from a paradise we've never seen but can visit through these clothes. The blossoms breed before our eyes, as one print migrates into the next. Dressed in a single weightless garment, a woman can wear more than one print at a time, the variations melding into a free-form bouquet.

Lightness is a van Noten motif, and his recent collections suggest that the designer is more immaterial than ever. Floral designs always have an ephemeral quality, as if, like the real thing, they were on a verge of disappearing. Van Noten's creations belong to a realm where clothes brush the skin as lightly as lips and feel just as good.

(Source: Bloom 17)

Trends per Continent - Japan Harajuku Girls

Gwen Stefani and her Harajuku Girls

Harajuku Girls in Japan

Gwen Stefani and her Harajuku Girls


Harajuku Girls - Japan
Harajuku (原宿) in Japan refers to an area around Harajuku train station. Harajuku style is a japanese fashion adopted by the teenagers and young adults in the area and its side streets which have many boutiques, trendy stores and used clothes shops

Japanese Harajuku Girls and Harajuku Style has been used to describe teens dressed in many fashion styles ranging from Gothic Lolita (also gothic loli) Visual Kei, Ganguro, Gyaru, Kogal, to "cute" Kawaii style clothing.

(Source:www.harajukustyle.net)

Just some Ethnic Pics

Ethnic Fashion on the Catwalks

Here you can see a selection of Ethnic Fashion on the catwalk. There is a diversity of colors and explosive prints from designers like Balenciaga, Ashima-Leena. Zac Posen. Fashion Worlds New, Note Bene & Karavayand Key Trend. They all have a different view about fashion but they all have the same 'ethnic' vibe.

Ethnic Fashion in Ads

Here are some Ethnic Fashion Ads by Levi's and Diesel. You can see that they used all kinds of influences from all around the world. It creates a diversity that really works! They used places like Venice, New York and Brazil.

LAKME: Indian Fashion Week

Indian Fashion designers : Fashion in India offers several opportunities for Indian fashion designers. Indian fashion industry is growing everyday. Indian designers combine Western trends with Indian touch, creating garments which are truly outstanding.

A fashion designer has to be creative. They have to express their designs in sketches. They need not be a excellent artists but should be capable of combining tones, shades and colors. Fashion designers need to have good imagination and an ability to think in three-dimension to translate into fashion what they can contemplate. A fashion designer has to be fashion savy and should have the knowledge and experience of elementary tailoring skills and techniques. A designer should also be able to distinguish among various kinds of fabrics.

1001 Cities with Dries van Noten

A ' 1001 Cities' is the theme of this editorial, based on Dries van Noten's collection of Spring 2008. These illustrations present luxury, class, ' jet-set' feeling and much more....

Film & Articles

CherryFlava

CherryFlava for Levi´s
Of all the shows we attended at this year's Cape Town fashion week - we enjoyed this one the most. Bed on bricks got things going and the street-style from the four different designers was uber edgy. Massive amounts of detailing, prints and layers were what differentiated and made it. Props to Levi's for reinventing their brand yet again - at least here in South Africa.

(Source: Permalink|July 21, 2006)

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Buy your own Ethnic T-shirts here!
These are the shirts we' ve designed for our blog. They represent our vision about Ethnic Fashion. We've tried to create a different feeling for every shirt. And there are many more to come...

Dries van Noten: Spring 2008 RTW

PARIS, October 3, 2007 – As the audience groped its way into a dark basement, it feared the worst. Could Dries still be in his somber winter fugue? No: After the first girl walked out in a flowered halter and a pair of contrasting pants, the runway gradually came alive with color, pattern, and easy shapes, and an almost audible sigh of relief ran through the room. This was Van Noten back on home ground, taking summer's license to run wild with florals while also capturing everything his devotees adore about the arty/ethnic cast of his clothes. "I worked on printing several different patterns on one piece of material," he explained, "so that you can end up wearing four or five prints in just a couple of pieces."

It takes a particular talent to mix color and print without making things too busy to deal with. Always essentially a reality-based designer, Van Noten made it all seem simple—and even, for him, a touch chic. He dealt out a kaleidoscope of painterly and fifties-derived florals and abstract leafy strokes in greens, blues, yellows, and saffrons. Deep bands of contrasting color turned up in the hems and yokes of dresses, classic scarf prints were transformed into silk pants, and little cuffed linen shorts came printed with tiny fifties flowers. The total impression was fresh but also, in the end, surprisingly sophisticated. The high-heeled shoes—fabric pumps and vertiginous multi-patchworked sandals—took the collection a distinct step away from boho hippie on holiday and into the zone of city dressing. And where Van Noten deployed lashings of semiprecious-stone necklaces and his signature metallic Indian embroidery, it suddenly became an inspiring vision of alternative luxe for day.

(Source: Style.com)