ROMANIAN PUNK
Adrian Oianu has over 25 years of experience in the fashion industry, with more than 100 signed collections and over one million unique products sold worldwide.
Photography by: Cristian Crisbășan
“Why ROMANIAN PUNK?
I am now trying to suggest how this folklore, this ethnic side, can be used. You can’t imitate the traditional Romanian blouse (ie). But you can be inspired by it and build another world. This stylistic exercise is what I have applied to this concept called Romanian Punk.
I said: let’s play with the black-and-white story of the Romanian people. The authentic costume is black and white. Color appeared much later as a flourish, a fashion of civilization. But initially, it was black and white, a beige, and later a little red.
I wanted to use a construction language that comes from punk, but with silhouettes that come from tradition, to see what happens. The materials are hand-dyed in a Jackson Pollock manner. Then I constructed the details of the traditional blouse, such as the ornamentation, from buttons and studs or safety pins. The applications keep the colors and shape of the traditional blouse’s applications, so from a distance, they resemble the traditional costume, but up close, you realize it’s a costume with spikes.
Why punk? Because the heart of punk is not identified through the extreme movements of the trend, but through a certain balance, a search for the essence of things, through developing an attitude of not believing everything you’re given, a certain detachment from the social bombardment you’re exposed to, a period when young people artistically and socially rebelled, standing up and saying: “we have our own minds and we want to decide how we want the world we live in to look.” Isn’t this a very current topic for the youth in Romania? Shouldn’t the youth in Romania wake up? Shouldn’t they eventually be able to raise their heads and say: “wait a minute, it’s not just about parties, smoking, snorting, and sleeping in dumpsters.”
The designer is also a social barometer. He lives very well connected to the community’s progress. I stay young and pay attention to what is happening around me, and now I look at this apathetic youth that still doesn’t have enough.”
