Romania's Culture Minister says she will ask French luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton to acknowledge that a traditional Romanian blouse directly inspired items in one of its 2024 collections.
“We will request that Louis Vuitton recognize the heritage and cultural value of the traditional ribbon blouse model,” Raluca Turcan wrote on Facebook on Monday night, adding that it is an opportunity for international recognition of the “inestimable value” of the Romanian tradition. .
The blouse in question is known in Romanian as “IE” (pronounced “E-eh”) and often features intricate embroidery and tassels and is widely recognized as a symbol of the country's rich popular culture. In 2022, garments with a specific style of embroidery were added to UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage.
Louis Vuitton did not immediately respond to questions sent by The Associated Press.
The clothes supposedly inspired were in Nicolas Ghesquiere's Resort 2024 collection for Louis Vuitton, where many clothes cost thousands of dollars (euros).
The campaign for Louis Vuitton to “give credit” to Romanian heritage was launched on Sunday by the online community La Blusa Roumaine, which has long urged fashion houses to give credit to collections that appropriate traditional clothing .
“We need to protect our intangible cultural heritage. “It is our cultural right to express our identity through these garments, through these traditional costumes,” Andreea Diana Tanasescu, founder of La Blusa Roumaine, told the AP. “They are part of Romanian history.”
The protest is not the first of its kind in Romania. In 2017, American designer Tory Burch changed the description of one of her designs, a traditional Romanian-style coat, after her brand angered thousands of Romanians by marketing it as an African-inspired garment. Burch said they had “missed a reference to a beautiful Romanian coat that inspired one of the pieces.”
