A little change of pace ...

So… I’m finally full. (and digressing for one blog, I hope you’ll forgive me). But I have other interests in items that cross borders and change cultures, the current topic on hand – clothes. Or fashion, as some would like to say. More or less these days, fashion designers use their own backgrounds and histories, muddled with the influence of worldly travels to create beautiful piece of wearable art (as I like to think of it).

But the ‘art’ can be duplicated, or washed and worn and in some sad cases, even start off as less than extraordinary. But one common thread is the magnificence of the artists (even if they may have made a questionable call using that gold chiffon). And there are plenty of designers who have crossed borders to brighten their own future as well as the world of fashion.

Oscar de la Renta is one name that jumps to mind right away. Originally from the Dominican Republic, he went to an art institute in Madrid at the age of 18 for painting, but his fashion illustrations for a Spanish magazine got him quickly noticed by Cristobal Balenciaga. Balenciaga is one of the fashion powerhouses today, and De la Renta got his foot in the door as a design assistant. From there his career flourished, as he worked at Lanvin and Elizabeth Arden before going out on his own. One might wonder why all of this matters, and what effect does it really have in our culture, but the answer is plenty. De la Renta now owns a fashion house that sells products ranging from perfume, to bags, to haute couture, and rakes in an estimated $500 million annually. More than his personal success, De la Renta has been given numerous accolades in the fashion world, as well as contributed to social organizations like the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall . He has also funded two schools for children living in poverty in the Dominican Republic.

There are so many designers who have had to leave the borders of their home countries to achieve success elsewhere that I couldn’t even begin to do then all justice. De la Renta happened to get my spotlight, because he is one of my personal favorites. You can see the life in his designs, and that is something I can appreciate. Not just me though, powerful women across the world have asked him to dress them. Laura Bush, Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Walter and Hillary Clinton are women who enjoy his work, just to name a few.

Though they might be just clothes, they have the potential to be so much more than that. De la Renta gives us (the world) a little taste of the Dominican Republic, whether he knows it or not, when he puts his heart and soul into his designs. Just like Emilio Pucci infused his designs with the Italian fervor for life with his boisterous prints. If we would only stop to look at the peole who create the clothes, we might just be able to decipher a little bit about the world they came from and how that fits in with the world we know ourselves.