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lexandre Herchcovitch (born in 21 July 1971, in S達o Paulo, Brazil) is a Brazilian fashion designer. He is of Jewish descent, and his grandparents immigrated to Brazil from Poland and Romania.
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Alexandre Herchcovitch
Contents Overview--------------------------------------6 Beginning-------------------------------------9 Products--------------------------------------12 Interview------------------------------16
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Overview Alexandre Herchcovitch is a designer who is able to transform classic into modern, simple into glamorous, easy into complex. His designs have been sent down the runways of New York, Paris, London and S達o Paulo Fashion Weeks. Best known for avant-garde designs and eclectic prints, his trademark skulls became an icon of Brazilian youth in the nineties. Changing the way the world thinks about Bra-
Overview zilian fashion, coupled with his new Japanese store and concessions in New York, Herchcovitch is fast becoming a big and serious name in the fashion world.
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Beginning
Beginning He had his first contact with fashion through his mother, Regina, at the age of ten, when she gave him basic lessons of modelling and sewing at Herchcovitch’s request. Regina started to wear the clothes he made in parties, which led him to sell his collections to friends. In his teen years, Alexandre used to go to the alternative clubs of São Paulo nightlife, but at the same 9
Alexandre Herchcovitch time he studied at a Religious Zionist Orthodox Jewish school, a conflict that had a strong influence over his work afterwards.
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Alexandre Herchcovitch
Products Since launching his collection in 1994, the Brazilian designer has held fast to his vision, bringing fantasy with a utilitarian streak that’s sometimes politically charged, be it through freaky constructions of molded rubber and gargantuan sequins, brash patterns and religious iconography, or the geometrically daring frocks he’s favored of late. Greatest hits include the Tyvek dress and a new 12
Products take on the tuxedo; more avant-garde and controversial looks include trashbags-cum-dresses and woven straw hats. Selected products of his are sold in the USA, Canada, England, France, Spain and Australia. His first store in Tokyo has recently opened. Herchcovitch chose Tokyo where a good part of his collections are purchased and where he has become somewhat of a fashion guru. The 1,076 sq ft (100.0 m2) 13
Alexandre Herchcovitch store, which sits in the hip Daikanyama district carries his men’s, women’s and denim collections and is operated in partnership with Japanese fashion distributor and retailer H.P. France.
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Alexandre Herchcovitch
Interview In February, 2013, Alexandre Herchovitch had an interview with The Creators Project. Brazilian fashion designer Alexandre Herchcovitch’s eclectic style is informed by Sao Paulo, futuristic visions, and reactions to everyday life. The Creators Project: How did you become interested in fashion? Alexandre Herchovitch: Observing my mother’s sense of style. 16
Interview
Do you have an academic background? When I had to pick a concentration, I chose plastic arts and did that for a year without knowing that there was a school for fashion. When I discovered there was a fashion school in Sao Paulo, I switched. Is schooling important for designers? Well, there’s a lot of debate about that. Some of the best designers didn’t study to become designers. They were learning intuitive17
Alexandre Herchcovitch ly, you know? Since I was working with clothes long before I ever enrolled at university, four or years before, I already had a brand. I sold and made clothes for some years. It was important for me because I wanted to understand fashion branding better. At the same time, I don’t think university did that for me ultimately. Where do you find inspiration? My influences come from various places. Music influences me, but in a marginal 18
Interview way, not directly. With me, music is important, but not in what I create. I don’t think music has a direct connection to my work. Has being from Sao Paulo influenced you much, do you think? There are a lot of commonalities between my work and where I’m from and where I was born. But I don’t think if you picked out one of my pieces and asked someone where they thought it were from, they wouldn’t say Brazil. My work doesn’t give off the 19
Alexandre Herchcovitch vibe that it’s specific to Sao Paulo or Brazil. What I think Sao Paulo helped me to do and to understand— because of its cosmopolitan nature—is make fashion that could be worn around world. You have a collection that was inspired by technology? Yes. I just used white fabrics that turned purple in the sun. This technology was originally used in creams that would change color in the sun—so we transferred it to fabric. I have an advantage in that 20
Interview the chemical factories in Brazil are always showing me the advances and appropriate them depending on whether I think they’re interesting or not. So, while technology may not be apparent in certain aspects of my fashion, it shows up in other parts of the manufacturing process. Could you explain your manufacturing process a little bit? How has it evolved along with the advancements in technology? I think the principal idea behind the line never 21
Alexandre Herchcovitch changes. What changes are the trends that appear to us. The processes of creativity, manufacture, and design—that’s done changing, you know? It’s been perfected, pretty much. But at the same time, fashion is never stagnant. A new thing arrives, a new technology, and you occupy yourself with that in order to integrate it into your line, so things never get stagnant.
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Interview
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Brazilian Fashion designer Alexandre
Herchovitch has all the guts of crossing the limits of innovation, unlike some Fashion designers.