Alexandre Herchcovitchon the runway Fall 2008, photo courtesy of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week
Alexandre Herchcovitchon the runway Fall 2008, photo courtesy of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week

NEW YORK, Feb 3, 2007 / FW/ — Over a ten-year career, Brazilian fashion designer Alexandre Herchcovitch has gone beyond every limit and has no trouble finding fresh ideas to outdo himself every season.

From his graduation fashion show to his presentations during Sao Paulo Fashion Week and through the popular Prêt-a-Porter Paris, his style adds new experiments and very thorough cut, modeling and selection of material.

His evolution may be corroborated in the t-shirt with a skull pattern (Sao Paulo’s underground icon in the early 90s), when the designer became known for his designs for prostitutes and transvestites, as well as in the festival of volumes and folds, contrasting with a dry contour occasionally lessened with A lines.

In relation to the series of fluctuations shown by Alexandre Herchcovitch, it is impossible not to mention his incursion into the world of latex (liquid rubber extracted from Amazon rubber trees), used in a number of garments that reveal his interest in art, in working a fashion language to communicate personal ideas and concepts.

“It’s a cliché to state that clothes are a way of expression, a presumable code of communication. Whenever anyone is wearing one of my designs, this person is transmitting information about the way he or she sees the world to other people. Rather than figures, lengths and colors in clothes, I am much more concerned with establishing a dialog between my universe and that of my clients,” he assesses.

Based on a defined concept, the fashion designer is focused on popularizing the label and increasing the number of consumers. In 1998, he created a designer jeans line and began exporting to London and New York. After a brief transition through the English fashion calendar, he finally arrives in Paris, where he shows his collections as the only Brazilian designer member of the Fashion Trade Union Association.

The express to the French capital is the hallmark of creativity for someone who, at the age of 16, designed an organza dress for his mother, who ran a small lingerie factory, which stands out for the spheres applied on the hem thus reflecting the concern about the fabric’s hanging and weight. The homey environment so related to fashion increased the boy’s talent, who went to an orthodox Jewish school of his own will and completed his fashion studies in a catholic institution. This may explain the interest of Alexandre Herchcovitch in blending influences, emotions, shapes and colors.

All of this may be confirmed in the eight annual collections he designed for his own level (two collections for women, two collections for men, and four designer jeans collections), as well as in his partnerships with major companies such as Converse – All Star (tennis), Democrata (men’s shoes), Grendene (Melissa thongs), JR Meneguzzo (designer jeans), Lupo (socks), Mallwee (t-shirts), Tilibra (notebooks and agendas), and Zêlo (Bed linen and bathroom accessories).

Without working with obvious references or submitting to the new international trends, the fear of “becoming a slave of Brazil,” as he put it two years ago in an interview, was buried under the fashion shows of summer 2003 and winter 2004, loaded with a significant sense of Brazilian tradition.

Thus, he discovered the idea of global village, created by Marshall MacLuhan in the 70s, who forecast an interconnected world interested in communicating the particular cultures. In a reduced context, Alexandre Herchcovitch’s designs are a perfect blend of a 100% Brazilian culture that charms customers from Brazil, the United States, Japan, Germany, China, England and Canada.
[MARI DAVIS]
Photo courtesy of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week

Website: www.herchcovitch.com.brALEXANDRE HERCHOVITCH
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