Tala Raassi is an Iranian-American Fashion Designer born in Maryland, United States and raised in Tehran, Iran. When Tala Raassi turned sixteen, she attended her Sweet 16 at a friend's house wearing a mini skirt. It was not long before the party was raided by the religious police and she and her friends faced the punishment of five days in jail and forty lashes. [1] In 2000 right after the punishment, Raassi moved back to the United States where she currently lives. [2]
After moving to the States and studying fashion marketing, Raassi opened a high-end boutique in Washington DC where she oversaw all aspects of business from construction, buying, and merchandizing to finance and payroll. While shopping for her boutique in São Paulo, Brazil during fashion week, Raassi became inspired to design her own line of swimsuits, Dar Be Dar. Raassi later left the store and started traveling the world to find the best fabrics, manufacturers, and suppliers, ultimately selecting Medellin, Colombia for production. [3]
Since its inception, Raassi's line, Dar Be Dar, has sponsored the Washington Wizards Dance Team and was the official swimwear sponsor for the Miss Universe 2010 pageant. [4] Dar Be Dar means door to door in Raassi's native language, Persian. In slang it means someone who is all over the place. “It represents me as a designer, because I had to go door to door to figure out the process of starting a fashion business.” [5]
In 2012, Raassi was called “One of the Most Fearless Women in the World” by Newsweek Magazine. [6] Tala Raassi has stated that she "aims to celebrate the beauty of the woman’s body through her designs and empower women all around the world to follow their dreams." For Tala Raassi, “fashion is freedom.”. [7]
Tala Raassi was on the program to appear in 3 events at the 2017 Brisbane Writers Festival in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. [8] [9]
A miniskirt is a skirt with its hemline well above the knees, generally at mid-thigh level, normally no longer than 10 cm (4 in) below the buttocks; and a dress with such a hemline is called a minidress or a miniskirt dress. A micro-miniskirt or microskirt is a miniskirt with its hemline at the upper thigh, at or just below crotch or underwear level.
Dame Barbara Mary Quant, Mrs Plunket Greene, is a British fashion designer and fashion icon. She became an instrumental figure in the 1960s London-based Mod and youth fashion movements. She was one of the designers who took credit for the miniskirt and hotpants. Ernestine Carter wrote: "It is given to a fortunate few to be born at the right time, in the right place, with the right talents. In recent fashion there are three: Chanel, Dior, and Mary Quant."
A crinoline is a stiff or structured petticoat designed to hold out a woman's skirt, popular at various times since the mid-19th century. Originally, crinoline described a stiff fabric made of horsehair ("crin") and cotton or linen which was used to make underskirts and as a dress lining. The term crin or crinoline continues to be applied to a nylon stiffening tape used for interfacing and lining hemlines in the 21st century.
A hobble skirt was a skirt with a narrow enough hem to significantly impede the wearer's stride. It was called a "hobble skirt" because it seemed to hobble any woman as she walked. Hobble skirts were a short-lived fashion trend that peaked between 1908 and 1914.
Alberta Ferretti is an Italian fashion designer and dressmaker. She designs for her namesake brand Alberta Ferretti, and designed for Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti until 2014. Her showroom is in Milan, Italy but her studio is in her native village of Cattolica, near Rimini, Italy. She was among a group of Italian designers who were invited to a reception for 200 designers and retailers held by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street, in October 1988.
Youthquake was a 1960s cultural movement. The term was coined by Vogue magazine's editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland in 1965. Youthquake involved music and pop culture, and it changed the landscape of the fashion industry. The movement is characterized by looking to youth culture for a source of inspiration, taking dominance away from the English and Parisian couture houses.
Fashion of the 1980s was characterized by a rejection of 1970s fashion. Punk fashion began as a reaction against both the hippie movement of the past decades and the materialist values of the current decade. The first half of the decade was relatively tame in comparison to the second half, which was when apparel became very bright and vivid in appearance.
Azzedine Alaïa was a Tunisian couturier and shoe designer, particularly successful beginning in the 1980s.
In a decade that broke many traditions, adopted new cultures, and launched a new age of social movements, 1960s fashion had a nonconformist but stylish, trendy touch. Around the middle of the 1960s decade, new styles started to emerge from small villages and cities into urban centers, receiving media publicity, influencing haute couture creations of elite designers and the mass-market clothing manufacturers. Examples include the mini skirt, culottes, go-go boots, and more experimental fashions, less often seen on the street, such as curved PVC dresses and other PVC clothes.
Western fashion in the 1920s underwent a modernization. For women, fashion had continued to change away from the extravagant and restrictive styles of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, and towards looser clothing which revealed more of the arms and legs, that had begun at least a decade prior with the rising of hemlines to the ankle and the movement from the S-bend corset to the columnar silhouette of the 1910s. Men also began to wear less formal daily attire and athletic clothing or 'Sportswear' became a part of mainstream fashion for the first time. The 1920s are characterized by two distinct periods of fashion: in the early part of the decade, change was slower, and there was more reluctance to wear the new, revealing popular styles. From 1925, the public more passionately embraced the styles now typically associated with the Roaring Twenties. These styles continued to characterize fashion until the worldwide depression worsened in 1931.
Shoulder pads are a type of fabric-covered padding used in men's and women's clothing to give the wearer the illusion of having broader and less sloping shoulders. In the beginning, shoulder pads were shaped as a semicircle or small triangle and were stuffed with wool, cotton, or sawdust. They were positioned at the top of the sleeve to extend the shoulder line. A good example of this is their use in "leg o' mutton" sleeves or the smaller puffed sleeves which are based on styles from the 1890s. In men's styles, shoulder pads are often used in suits, jackets, and overcoats, usually sewn at the top of the shoulder and fastened between the lining and the outer fabric layer. In women's clothing, their inclusion depends on the fashion taste of the day. Although from a non-fashion point of view they are generally for people with narrow or sloping shoulders, there are also quite a few cases in which shoulder pads will be necessary for a suit or blazer in order to compensate for certain fabrics' natural properties, most notably suede blazers, due to the weight of the material. There are also periods when pads intended to exaggerate the width of the shoulders are favored. As such, they were popular additions to clothing during the 1930s and 1940s; the 1980s ; and the late 2000s to early 2010s.
Trousers or pants are a staple of historical and modern fashion. Throughout history, the role of trousers is a constant change for women. The first appearance of trousers in recorded history is among nomadic steppe-people in Western Europe. Steppe people were a group of nomads of various different ethnic groups that lived in the Eurasian grasslands. Archaeological evidence suggests that men and women alike wore trousers in that cultural context. However, for much of modern history, the use of trousers has been restricted to men. This norm was enforced in many regions due to social customs and laws. There are, however, many historical cases of women wearing trousers in defiance of these norms such as the 1850s women rights movement, comfort, freedom of movement, fashion, disguise, attempts to evade the gender pay gap, and attempts to establish an empowered public identity for women. Especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, the customs and laws restricting this manner of dress have relaxed dramatically, reflecting a growing acceptance and normalisation of the practice.
Alice + Olivia is a New York City-based contemporary clothing company with designer Stacey Bendet at the helm. The global brand launched at Barneys in 2002, and is now sold in over fifty countries.
Lanvin is a French luxury fashion house based in Paris. Founded in 1889 by Jeanne Lanvin, it is the third oldest French fashion house still in operation. Since 2018, it has been a subsidiary of Shanghai-based Lanvin Group. Bruno Sialelli, a 31-year-old French designer, was named Creative Director of Lanvin in January 2019.
Anne Fogarty was an American fashion designer, active 1940–1980, who was noted for her understated, ladylike designs that were accessible to American women on a limited income. She started out as a model in New York in 1939, working for Harvey Berin on Seventh Avenue, before studying fashion design. She eventually secured a full-time design job in 1948, and became well-known for full-skirted designs with fitted bodices, inspired by Dior's New Look.
Kendra Scott is an American fashion designer. She is the executive chairwoman, designer, and former chief executive officer of Kendra Scott, LLC. In 2017, she was named Ernst & Young's National Entrepreneur of the Year.
Fashion and clothing in the Philippines refers to the way the people of Filipino society dress up in instances such as while they are at home, at work, travelling and when attending special occasions.
Ruta Anna "Ruth" Tarvydas was an Australian fashion designer. Born in Germany to Lithuanian parents, her family emigrated to Perth, Western Australia, when Tarvydas was two years old. She opened her first boutique at the age of 19, with her brother, and shortly after established her first label. In 1983, Taryvdas became the first Australian designer to export clothing overseas. By the 2000s, she had designs being sold in 170 outlets across 16 countries, with a number of celebrity clients, both in Australia and overseas. A flagship store in King Street, Perth, was opened in 2009, but closed three years later with Tarvydas in heavy debt. A new store was opened in Claremont in 2012, and was featured with Tarvydas in a 2013 ABC1 documentary. Tarvydas was to debut at Paris Fashion Week in 2014, but she died two months before the event.
Fashion activism is the practice of using fashion as a medium for social, political, and environmental change. The term has been used recurringly in the works of designers and scholars Lynda Grose, Kate Fletcher, Mathilda Tham, Kirsi Niinimäki, Anja-Lisa Hirscher, Zoe Romano, and Orsola de Castro, as they refer to systemic social and political change through the means of fashion. It is also a term used by some fashion designers, one being Stella Mccartney. The spectacle of fashion activism as street protest has also been a theme in Paris Catwalk shows, perhaps most noted in Chanel's spring/summer 2015 show, designed by Karl Lagerfeld. The term is also popularly used by Céline Semaan, co-founder of the Slow Factory Foundation.
Jessica Metcalfe is a blogger, who runs an online boutique, Beyond Buckskin, and a namesake blog. A member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe, she received her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and a PhD from the University of Arizona in American Indian studies. She was a managing editor and a writer for the International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts, & Humanities blog Red Ink Magazine. She was a professor at the Turtle Mountain Community College and the Arizona State University where she taught Native American studies, studio art, art history, literature, and anthropology.