Project title: My country -Romania
Selected for scholarships 2009-2010, Course of Jewellery Design, School of Fashion, IED Milan

I built my project around the idea of a national specific, which is not a material thing, created like any product, but rather a value accumulated in time.

I believe that our generation is one without a close past! The communism and all it created is considered cheap, which I find to be a wrong approach. We know too little from the past.. I believe that every generation must rewrite history.

Starting with this concept, I tried to build and rewrite the main piece of the Romanian national dress: the shirt. The shirt is found both in the female costume and in the male costume as the basic outfit element which revealed the social status, age, wealth and was worn in any occasion: at work, on celebration days, at funerals, at home, etc.

The name of this shirt is ‘IE’, the basic model being enriched or modified in accordance to the style of different regions of the country.

I chose to redraw this clothing piece by giving it significances and characteristics gathered in time by the Romanian nation. Thus, the shoulders of the shirt are transformed in a sort of armor by embroidering them with thin golden thread- a symbol for the fighter character of the one who wears it. For the rest of the shirt is used a light and semi opaque material embroidered in bright colors.

The ribbon skirt is inspired by the traditional ornaments- many colored ribbons and beads that the young girls used to wear on celebration days or on their wedding day. For the Romanian peasant the emblazon was not added accessory but a component of the clothing ensemble and was transmitting information about belonging to a certain group.

The second outfit is formed of a traditional ‘IE’ which has been decomposed and of a reinterpretation of the traditional male pants- an outfit that represents the present day and ‘reinventing’ of the past.

The last ‘piece’ I have imagined is a brooch which holds a component of the current Romanian national coat of arms, while the other part (the aquila) I have replaced by a butterfly made out of colored beads hold together by a thin golden structure.

The realization of this brooch is also based on the concept of accumulation: of the beginnings of the Romanian nation when most of the jewelry were made out of gold (the thin golden structure), of the tradition of Romanian ornaments made out of colored beads, ribbons, of natural elements such as flowers (the colored glass balls), of the national identity by keeping the symbols of the coat of arms, the spirit and spiritual identity of Romanians from all times: liberty and resurrection /transformation of oppressions in values and beauty.