hey friends, if you care about cultural appropriation and the damage it causes, please check out this awesome project!
in 2017 dior copied the design of a traditional romanian coat from the county of bihor and sold it for 30,000 euro, giving no credit to the local artisans. in response, romanian fashion magazine beau monde helped the community create their own brand, bihor couture, which sells the original coat, handmade to order, for 500 euro a piece. they also sell other traditional clothing and jewelry for much more accessible prices (5-45 euro). they’ve been hugely successful so far, and currently have enough pre-orders to cover 4.5 years of work, with 100% of the profits returning to the community.
it’s surprisingly common for big name fashion designers like dior, gaultier, tom ford and altuzarra to copy traditional romanian clothing and sell it for ridiculous prices, with minimal original input, while giving nothing back to the community where these designs originated. it’s completely unfair that a big name designer can just steal so much hard work and misuse it to make huge profits.
please support bihor couture, if not by ordering one of their products, then by spreading the news around. it’s really awesome to see a small community fight back against cultural appropriation so successfully. i hope they carry on for a long time!
BiTCH they do that with EVERY culture!!! There is a lot of plagiarism towards mexican and latin fashion (by that I mean traditional fashion). This aint the first time. Don’t start spreading this just bc it’s white ppl being victimized now
I am not going to bother explaining to you anything, not even some relevant facts about history and current social issues, because I am aware you are not interested anyway and if you were, you would use Google. I just want to ask why you threw the word white as if there aren’t millions of white Mexicans and as if you knew anything about us in the first place? I was actually discussing the same issues presented in the video with a Mexican follower before I posted the video and we were able to relate without dismissing either culture’s problems. I guess some of us are more mature?
The video was made by BM after an entire year in which the Romanian community, La Blouse Roumaine, kept fighting against Tory Burch selling items 100% copied after Romanian ethnic clothes but with the label African-inspired on them. The same clothes are already sold by Romanian producers for less and the quality is better, yet they have no place on the foreign market. Then Dior happened and people became more aware of how this is affecting us. The Western world either pretends we don’t exist or treat us like the scum of this planet, yet they love stealing our cultural identity (and lands and natural resources as well).
The idea is that at the of the day, Dior won’t lose its clients nor millions. Nor will Tory Burch, Zara and others. But these people from Bihor? They will have work for a couple of years and maybe their kids won’t have to leave the country or succumb to alcoholism. It is a step for them. Big or small, it doesn’t matter.
You acting so rude and bitter won’t stop the Bihoreni from trying to save their traditions, nor will it help the Latin Americans and their economy.
Also, I posted this video for the Romanians on tumblr and others who follow this blog. I didn’t expect it to have more than maybe 20 notes. Half of the notes are from mean people like you and people who mistook us for Romani people (poc) and suddenly cared. You help it spreading it yourselves so congrats, I guess.
