19th Feb., 2016
Viaggio- Ready for a Trip?
In case you are tentative, here is why you should join us this very season!
CIRIANA's newest collection’s name, Viaggio, translates to "journey" and it refers to our short but intense story, as well as our plans for nearest future. Ciriana has been travelling since always. First it came up north Europe from Rome to Warsaw and Helsinki. Last year our dresses went across the globe to appear in Los Angeles and Qingdao. This year we are going to Rio de Janeiro!
For this reason we are presenting a cosmopolitan and egalitarian SS16. It is universal, comfortable and breathing to suit the hottest springs and summers on the globe. Its delicate, high-quality fabrics, as well as light colours are meant to prove our dresses comfortable both in Santa Monica's resorts and at the glam cocktails in the Copacabana Palace.
The journey to take this season is not a hitchhiking ride with a back pack. This is going to be a first class trip experienced with a small chic handbag in comfy mid-heeled sandals. Take with you a wide-brimmed hat and a sun cream, as this Spring/ Summer is hot, semi-transparent in places, exposing legs, arms and décolleté.
VIAGGIO silk and lace dresses float delicately on the wind as if looking for a relief from a heavy tropical air. Skirts slimmed on the hips and flared with godets display their full voluminous charm while set to a movement of a walk or dance. Viaggio lines reflect sun rays and glimmer coquettishly with their silk gloss.
Ciriana's VIAGGIO does not stand still. It travels fast forward to the places where the chic and the elegant are welcomed by modern fashion hedonists. If you are one of them this is the trip you should be joining.
Let's Make it Slow
16th Dec., 2015
“Dolce vita” is an Italian concept of “sweet life” led among an exquisite landscape and weather, among the Roman Empire’s voluminous monuments igniting imagination. The Italian and especially Roman surrounding, with all its distinctive features, screams for elegance, refinement and subtlety with a reference to tradition.
Art, music, architecture and - last but not least - fashion are the disciplines in which endless creative quests for harmony and beauty have been conducted in the past and nowadays.
Ciriana has just started a journey in the shadow of this tradition by having reworked well-known themes and enriched them with new creative contemporary motives.
We are determined to make Ciriana a slow fashion label in order to have a chance to get the ultimate pleasure from selecting the finest Italian textiles, creating tasteful forms and shapes, offering them to our demanding clientele and enjoying their exquisite looks presented while wearing our lines.
After all in our fast moving reality, with an overwhelming imperative of joining the mass worship of mediocrity, striving for values – like: quality, seamless customer service, respect for environment and human rights - look like luxury, or I would rather want to believe, awakening. This is us, consumers, who decide what and how we shop, what we wear and how we want to be handled as clients.
Italians have taught me that life can be tasteful and enjoyable rather than fast, cheap and slapdash. I experienced it myself and fully embraced it. Since then I am determined to look for people thinking alike. Who is with me?
May the Force (of Color) Be with You
21st Nov., 2015
“Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers.”- Cecil Beaton
Southern Italy: a dazzling sunlight, an intense ever-present heat, time passing slowly, sweat dripping down your face, flies buzzing around, a bench with some old women all dressed in black. Any other associations with this part of the world?
Modern Rome - even if capital city of a well-developed European country - does not seem to be far from this cliché. Rome is very southern in its character. Maybe this might be why in the autumn/ winter season you can't find clothes other than black, be it in stores or on the streets.
If you are not quite within the stylistics of Desigual you will find nothing but black, grey or dark blue colors at your disposal. Black is the color! Go to any party in Rome and you will immediately feel like participating in a mourning ceremony, where wearing another color feels inappropriate. Have you seen Monika Bellucci in the recent Bond's episode? She is all in black, head to toes, which might be partially explained as she features a widow character. Partially because she even wears a total black lingerie when we see her waking up with James after a love night.
The Italians' admiration for the black is justified by the type of beauty the Southern people represent. With their jet black hair, brown eyes and dark complexions they look fantastic in black indeed. It might be safe and practical, it composes well with anything. Yet for a fashion designer with vibrant ideas the concept of offering black only in all kind of its shades seems depressing indeed. Boredom, melancholy and geriatrics are my own associations.
We decided to challenge this monochromatic way of thinking by making an experiment. We let a pretty Italian girl in her 30-ties go around in our dress of a simple form but in a decisive cobalt blue color. It was quite safe actually, not a true revolutionary outburst of vibrant Mediterranean fantasy. And guess what. Her new color turned out to be an utter surprise for anybody she met. It worked like a magic wand waking up people to realize that colors exist and may look great on you! They simply stopped and stared.
The colors, the light and the air of the Mediterranean fun and cheerful lifestyle do exist in Ciriana and we do not fear of bringing them back and using their magic. We know that ultimately this is us, fashion consumers, who decide what we find in stores. This is also us who like to stand out rather than simply follow the stream of uniformed fellows looking alike. Besides all progress occurs if only people dare to be different! Are you up to the challenge of bringing colors back to life?
Indecent Proposal
2 Nov. 2015
After years of conforming with generally accepted standards, being reasonable, adequate and polite I pronounce I stop to be a good girl!
In a society where constantly growing consumption is a driving force of economy it is very difficult not to follow the stream. Every day, every minute and by every medium I am being told that I need to buy something. No matter my mood, my situation, no matter what, I am attacked with the idea of never-ending shopping: buying things that mostly I do not need to have.
Do you shop your clothes 6 seasons a year? If your answer is no, you are most probably not counting right. Our wardrobes are full to the extent that we have problems with managing the never-ending influx of the garments into our home spaces. Paradoxically we never know what to wear. Why? Because we are told that in order to stay trendy we need to constantly buy the new.
It is estimated that consumers purchase at least 80 billion new pieces of garment annually these days, which is four times more than 20 years ago. In order to supply the growing needs apparel producers offer faster and faster methods of manufacturing. The old good cotton, an epitome of a healthy fabric and the principal component of majority of our garments is genetically engineered by means of chemicals in order to grow faster. Consumers wear the chemicals on their skin wondering where on earth this new allergy comes from. The quality of clothes leave much to be desired, yet it does not matter much as their short live cycles are perfectly in line with ephemeral micro trends being launched by designers. You are a cool trendy dude if you stay on track with fast fashions!
And this is exactly what I object. Being forced to wear what fast fashion companies want me to wear is what I declare to rebel against! Instead I want to stay on track with myself and be up to date with how I look and feel at a present moment. I change with time and so does my life, yet my style cannot be compromised.
Instead of fast fashions I choose to stick to European tailoring traditions, to elegant lines which have already been tested by generations of women and prove to work any time. I choose to buy in a slow and considerate manner, to enjoy selecting my pieces and then wearing them for more than one season. I choose to be trendy by updating my wardrobe with what woman of my age, status and hair color looks best in, no matter what the other say that I need to be buying. I choose to go against the tide and I am submitting my proposal to you to do the same.
Even if all apparel business indices show that fast fashions sell best nowadays this is the consumers who eventually decide what to wear. Don't you think that following my daring proposal might bring a true change?
Back of Powerful Femininity
14 Oct. 2015
The meaning of the name Ciriana is a strong-willed woman with leadership attributes, free and independent, a pioneer and an inventor, determined to strive for high performance and to achieve. The woman who marches forward, paving her own way, followed by both male and female admirers attracted to her spirit and values.
She is not a fighting predator of G.I Joe (or rather G.I. Jane) style, neither is she a domestic kitten. Her power lies in deeply rooted values which are the source of her high self-esteem and a conviction that the world belongs to the brave.
Is this personality type in line with contemporary woman’s role model? I want to believe that yes, it is. Aging societies where men are naturally outnumbered by women, societies with the greater longevity of women compared with men, create environments for independent, strong, mature and self-conscious woman figures.
If you ask what she is like, my simplest answer is that this woman looks really good! In the times of aggressively sexual visual communication, once people came to believe that freedom means that anything is allowed and socially acceptable, Ciriana decides to use unaffected elegance to influence others, to be noticed and listened to.
Among many powerful fashion-related quotes, my favorite one is that of Mark Twain who noticed: "This is clothes which make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society".
Intelligent and successful women living in a men’s world do not communicate by dazzling nudity. On the contrary they show no more that is needed to inspire imagination. Sophisticated simplicity, understatement and femininity are what they use to exert their influence. This is the type of a woman who is desired by strong, complex-free man. This is the sort of a female who attracts other strong women thinking alike. And now is an ideal time to think, talk and write about it, now when mediocrity keeps spinning around us. This is the time when Ciriana speaks up!
Slow Time is Sexy Time
29 Sept. 2015
...as one of English sayings suggests. I remembered it since when I was little but not understood it clearly. Many years later I finally got it! I reached a point when I delight in all that can be experienced in a very slow manner. After all nowadays isn't it luxury not to be in a constant hurry?
"The fast" however is what rules our lives. Business analyses show that the most successful fashion retailers these days propose to consumers nothing more than nicely designed yet low-quality and cheap type of garment (over)produced in gigantic volumes and distributed worldwide. Encouraged with their own successes the fast fashion giants overtake global markets and made consumers believe that what they offer is mainstream.
Who of us does not want to be in the mainstream? Who does not want to present him- or herself in an up-to-date, trendy, fresh manner, be appreciated in a peer group for taste and a sense of style? And here comes the catch.
It turns out that more and more people look for unique clothing solutions. Raised in cultures of individualism, constantly stimulated for independent thinking, especially US and European consumers want to be different from the mass and desire to manage their individual styles by themselves.
People do not really like the idea of wearing what millions of other people wear all over the globe. We want to look unique. We want to wear what we look best in and what WE perceive nice and stylish. How to solve the dilemma of our wishes versus what is offered by an apparel market?
In Ciriana we believe that coming back to our cultural roots is a solution. Looking back at our art, design, splendid architecture that survived millennia and reviving the fashion tradition that has been offering immortal lines and patterns might help in a pursuit of your solid style in the times of mediocrity. What has worked for generations, yet updated with new ideas, colors and modernized by latest textile technologies is a nice foundation to build a real STYLE on. "Fashions fade, only style is eternal" as Yves Saint Laurent once said.
An Italian colleague of mine once told me that he appreciated classic Ciriana for exposing not too much of woman's body, offering a space for interpretation. "We Italians prefer to imagine things rather than have them explicit. We like to consume slowly enjoying every bite." Well then, how to disagree with the "slow is sexy" motto?