Celebrating the Universal Day of The Romanian Blouse in Dubai

Today, 24th of June, is the Universal Day of the IE (known as the Romanian blouse or la blouse roumaine), a traditional Romanian blouse skillfully decorated with fine art hand embroidery. Initiated by the Facebook community "La Blouse Roumaine" just few months ago, this day is celebrated around the world by Romanians and their friends. It is from my knowledge the first time in history (ok, exaggerating) when Romanians around the world enthusiastically unite for a common cause, to unveil the beauty, the sense and the stories behind one of the most beautiful artifacts that Romania gave the world. 

I have few Romanian blouses, but my newest one was brought all the way to Dubai from Romania by TAROM, the Romanian Airline. 

Smaranda Braescu, the first Romanian pilot, also called
The Queen of the Air, wearing the Romanian Blouse

The beauty and elegance of the Romanian Blouse in Dubai

The patterns on this blouse symbolize continuity

Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, has a view of the Romanian Blouse :)

The Romanian Blouse - telling its own story

TAROM's uniform is rather beautiful, but what if we changed it to
something inspired from the Romanian Blouse?

The beautiful stewardesses from TAROM wearing the Romanian blouse.

                                     

"La blouse roumaine" - how I see it (and this is just the beginning)

Talking about handcrafts... I am over the moon with these two new items in my wardrobe, my own interpretation of "ie" - a type of typical Romanian blouse (also found in other countries in Eastern Europe and North Europe in different variations), most commonly known as "la blouse roumaine". This name became famous after the French painter Henry Matisse fell in love with the Romanian blouse and started to create a collection of paintings called "La blouse roumaine" (one of them you can see in the background of this blog).

After few other trials, I am lucky to have met an amazing woman who understand exactly how I want my "blouse roumaine" to look like and created these stunning pieces that are entirely hand embroidered. I am seriously blown away by the quality of her (and her team's) work!

This is not about fashion, it is about creating life long lasting pieces that you can pass on, clothes that have a soul and a story of their own. It takes about 3 weeks to make one piece, so imagine the energy, the emotions, the skills, the passion, the the effort that it takes...

Practicing the front pose - Homework number one

Fashion design, HOMEWORK WEEK 1: April 25

Hello there! I wish all the homeworks in school were as excited as this one! As I previously mentioned, our homework for the week one was to find something we like in a magazine or wherever and draw it.

I stuck to my intention to draw this Carolina Herrera outfit (I just saw it one day on a Facebook page, so I can’t really confirm which collection and if really is CH). There are few reasons I choose this outfit (which is not necessarily the most glamorous choice):

1. The blouse is inspired by the traditional Romanian blouse called “ie” (the same that inspired Matisse to do the painting that is the background of this blog). So you see the red thread here? J
2. The color of the blouse – I wanted to try to draw the white blouse, it seemed to me it was more difficult that to draw something in another color. So I wanted to try.
3. The skirt has the lace element to it, as well as a the frills – again, had a moment to think how to render at least an idea of lace (something we will be probably taught at a later stage)
4. The front pose is the only one we learned how to draw, and this one looked easy enough 

    

              

The colors are not exactly the original ones, but had no other blue. I actually had a darker blue in markers but I don’t know how to use them yet, I have a feeling there is a trick to it as when I tried to use it, it didn't really look nice. So I used the colored pencils and a normal H pencil. I only used the markers for the hair and for the shoes.

I have to say, the part it I really got frustrated at was the mouth…

That’s it for now, I can’t wait for my next course J