Transylvanian Fashion Invasion
June 7, 2009
Since 2006 Romania’s most exciting fashion-label has been sending their latest designs from their HQ in the Carpathian mountains to international collections, scaring the shit out of rival metropolitan designers and sending avant-garde fashionistas crazy in the process. A constant hit at London Fashion Week’s OnIOff, for their transylvanian influences and spare aesthetic (except for their floral boots & zany headdress!) Rozalb de Mura ain’t no ordinary label. It’s led by a self-imagined, eponymous Baron who travels through time, space, reality and fiction for projects which work across multidisciplinary-platforms. Alex Jackson caught up with designer and founder, Olah Gyarfas.
A time-travelling Baron? What the Hell?!!
It was our way to ensure we’d have the creative freedom to explore very different concepts and collaborations with musicians and artists. But he is very much a projection of our team – you know how it is when you tell stories and become so engrossed in them that you end up believing them with all your heart? We fell in love with the character we created, so much so that we ourselves don’t know the borders between fiction and reality anymore.
Tell us about your new Autumn/Winter 09/10 collection: “Powder Cadillac 1B-2140 & Desert Twillight 6A – 3410”
The Powder Cadillac 1B-2140 & Desert Twillight 6A – 3410 collection, which we presented at OnIOff London Fashion Week with the generous support of Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Ratiu Family Foundation and ICR London, started out as a reflection on “trend”, a notion that hysterically obsesses the fashion world. People expect a designer to be a sort of guru, authoritatively decreeing what’s “in” and what’s “out”. I’ve always been far from such marketing tools that dictate and push people to buy stuff compulsively, so I thought an ironic take on trends would be a nice starting point for a collection. We found the names in a colour sample catalogue and loved their vintage romantic sound.
Consequently, in the new Rozalb de Mura story, the Baron arranged a meeting with Max Lüscher (the famous Swiss psychotherapist). In the ‘60s, Lüscher invented a colour personality test that established close links between a person’s colour preferences and their personality and psychological traits. The Baron then ‘commissioned’ Lüscher to research the much sought-after “colours of the future” – a shade of grey and a shade of pink.
You live in the Carpathian Mountains, chop wood and breathe the pure air of the Transylvanian country – how is your rural side distilled into your ultra-modern designs and can you tell us more about your home-town of Miercurea Ciuc?
I was born in and I grew up amid nature, I breath nature, it’s in my veins. It’s not a conscious choice. Then, of course, the internet erased all frontiers between urban and countryside. Charming and sad in the same time, isn’t it?
As for Miercurea Ciuc, most people speak Hungarian as the city has a Székely (an ethnic subgroup of the Hungarian nation) majority. It’s definitely the North Pole of Romania in terms of coldness and, actually, there are some incredibly good vintage shops selling dirt-cheap Scandinavian stuff.
You have previously said: “Every time I start a new collection, I try to discover a ‘place’ I’ve never been to. It can be disconcerting at the beginning nevertheless, this feeling of being lost in a totally new world pushes me a bit further.” Does this attitude apply to our current state of economic upheaval?
We are in the middle of an enormous process of change. The economic crisis is, for us, a crash-course in survival strategies; all the while we must keep output levels ambitious and uncompromised. Radical approaches, meanwhile, should be against banal ideas and cynical viewpoints on creative industries. In this period, I think artists and designers should become more eager, more sincere to themselves, be more sustainable and more aggressive. More creative, in a way.
Should I mention that we’re looking for an investor to take things to the next level? This is quite a project in itself, but there is huge potential within Rozalb de Mura and I hope some smart people will see that. Ideally, an eccentric millionaire involved with the arts world! But there are no such people here; we have either the safe type or the kitsch version. Maybe we’re daydreaming too much?
So how does recession leave Romania’s fashion/creative scene?
Production moves to India, China or Bangladesh and half of Romanian factories are in free-fall. Everything happens rapidly and completely at random, most don’t have time to react. Also, Romania is not that cheap a country anymore and for many factories production prices imposed by the big brands are just not economically viable.
Our factory got hit too, though not lethally because it’s involved in producing equipment for firefighters – a very specialised niche and not all that volatile. Obviously, we still feel the crisis: shops close and orders get cancelled. It’s tough for young labels who’re all the more fragile during these times, especially as buyers are less adventurous.
Unfortunately, Romanian consumers are not terribly supportive of local designers either, despite there being extremely creative people working to excellent standards. Romania is an ex-communist country in which the fashion scene is rather small and still struggling to coagulate. Sadly, designers and the small companies behind them don’t collaborate at all. There’s little infrastructure or support for developing a business in this field so you have to imagine your own solutions.
Fashion is just a medium to express our ideas and to inspire. But the way we do things in fashion can definitely help a more sustainable development. I recently got hold of a book (Self-Organization, Sternberg Press) with thought-provoking examples of counter-economic strategies employed by groups of artists and activists, like LETsystems (local, non-profit exchange networks in which goods and services can be traded without the need for printed currency). It shows that even in the current global economy there are already examples of people building a different architecture for social innovation.
Speaking of innovation, you’ve already collaborated with British sound artist Mikhail Karikis, Berlin’s Contemporary Art Biannual and with interior designers Liste Noire. Why are multidisciplinary projects so important to you?
Nowadays, everything has been revisited, reinterpreted, quoted, used and reused a thousand times. I see it as an organic process. There are no real boundaries between creative realms anymore. I, as well as the creative team I work with, have genuine interests and curiosities in so many different fields. Each field comes with its own language, its own vision and its own tools. When put together, it is obvious that something deliciously new and fresh will emerge, something in-between, a hybrid that speaks its own language.
We also have a new project with Tobias Sternberg (fantastical visual artist from Sweden) coming up but we can’t tell a word right now 😉
Rozalb de Mura is available from stores like Destination Shop (Amsterdam), Best Shop (Berlin), Belleville Store (Berlin), I Love Shopping (Bologna), Ostblock (Zurich), Szidonia Szep (Budapest) and, of course, the Rozalb de Mura store in Bucharest. Check out www.rozalbdemura.ro for more.
Tags: London, Olah Gyarfas, On/Off, Rozalb de Mura, Transylvania
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