Fashion’s global melting pot
Fashion really has gone global. I’m not talking about the wave of European luxury companies extending their logoed empires into China but fashion as a means of cross-cultural exchange. With fashion weeks in Seoul, Beirut, Saigon, Sao Paulo, New Delhi, Hong Kong and a dozen other cities now, it’s safe to say that at any given moment, models are strutting down a runway somewhere in the world. A fashion week, it seems, is becoming as much a part of a nation’s cultural fabric as an opera or ballet company, even where there is not a strong tradition of textile production.
Mexican-born L.A. designer Louis Verdad has been invited to show at South African Fashion Week in Johannesburg in July. Eduardo Lucero, who has a shop on Beverly Boulevard here, just returned from presenting his spring collection in Mexico City. And boutique owner Tracey Ross attended the shows in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) last month, where she placed orders with three Indian designers.
In the same cross-cultural spirit, makeup artist Shalini Vadhera has written a new book called “Passport to Beauty,” full of beauty tips from different cultures. (Lucky girl, she traveled all of last year for research.) Vadhera has worked on TV shows and with celebrities for the last decade. She is an Indian American raised in Carlsbad who as a child visited Asia and Africa often to see relatives. Her first beauty icons were the flight attendants on Singapore Airlines, and from the first time she saw them applying their makeup, she was hooked.
On a recent trip, Vadhera asked a particularly radiant member of the flight crew to share her skin secret. It was a simple face masque passed down from her grandmother (1 egg yolk, 2 tablespoons sugar).
And so, a book idea was hatched. “It doesn’t matter if women are from Ethiopia, where they have no rights and no running water, or from Rodeo Drive, they all want to be beautiful,” Vadhera says. “And they all have secrets that have been passed down from generation to generation.” Some of her favorites are a Brazilian cellulite-fighter that involves rubbing wet sand on your thighs, and a recipe for a nail strengthener from the Dominican Republic that requires wearing clear nail polish mixed with chopped garlic. (Never mind the smell.)
Vadhera has launched an accompanying product line ($15 to $45) offering colors that target the mid-range skin tone of South Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern and mixed-ethnicity women. The collection is available on her website, www.globalgoddessbeauty.com, and at Sephora stores. Highlights include an all-in-one kit for Bollywood-style eyes ($40) with fluttery fake lashes, kohl pencils, neutral, tea-inspired eye shadow colors and how-to tips, and a coconut oil hair treatment ($45), adapted from a concoction that Vadhera and her Indian relatives swear by for shiny hair.
East meets West
in the two-piece
Tara Matthews is capitalizing on fashion’s cross-cultural moment in a totally different arena, bringing East and West together in a line of swimwear. Matthews’ bikinis combine the fit and flattery that can only be achieved by Brazilian manufacturing with the handicraft of Indian embroidery. String and halter styles (beginning at $200) are embroidered with tiny mirrors, Bhutanese lucky signs and the ever-trendy skull and crossbones. Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan are fans, and Beyonce Knowles recently placed a custom order for a $2,500 bikini.
Matthews, who graduated from Occidental College and lives in London and Corsica, visited L.A. this week for a trunk show at Tracey Ross. “Everyone thinks Brazil exports Giseles,” she said, referring to the giraffe-like supermodel. “They don’t. But women there know the smaller the bikini is, the smaller you look. The eye is actually drawn to fabric and the more you cover, the fatter you look.”
The line also includes a “tareo,” Matthews’ version of a pareo except with sleeves, that’s substantial enough to go from the beach to the bar. The collection is available at Ross’ boutique, as well as Satine and www.netaporter.com.
This year is the 60th anniversary of the bikini, and every retailer from Bloomingdale’s to Figleaves.com is ballyhooing it. Elle magazine Editor Kelly Killoren Bensimon’s “The Bikini Book” (Assouline, $29.95), out this month, credits French fashion designer Louis Reard with inventing the bikini, named after a South Pacific island where the atomic bomb was being tested. Bensimon devotes 400 pages to the skimpiest of suits, with photos of pinups, Bond girls and topless Brazilian beauties.
The fashion students at L.A.’s own Otis College designed a few bikinis of their own and showed them on the runway last weekend at the school’s scholarship benefit. Working with design mentor Rod Beattie of swimwear label La Blanca, senior class member Dana Schnitman created one of the most striking styles, in an African block-print crisscrossed with colorful beads.
Perfect for strutting, if not for swimming.
