© Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas Images
Diaphanous drapings in Rajasthan (India): doesn’t every woman invent her own style?
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A modest start
Ocimar Versolato was born
to parents of Italian origin in 1961 near São Paulo, Brazil’s industrial capital.
Deprived of an income following the death of his father, an industrialist, his mother
opened up a sewing workshop patronized by the cream of São Paolo society.
Unlike his five brothers and sisters, young Ocimar fell in love with the business.
Since there was not yet a place to study fashion in Brazil, Versolato went to architecture
school, but soon dropped out and started a successful business making accessories
that he sold to ready-to-wear shops. In 1987 he left for Paris after meeting Marie
Rucki, director of the prestigious Berçot fashion design school, where he
enthusiastically took classes.
The young Brazilian perfected his training during a four-year stint with the designer
Hervé Léger before launching a luxury ready-to-wear line in 1993. Staged
with the help of a few friends and a 3,000-franc budget ($500), his first show of
evening gowns won him many offers. Versolato joined Lanvin, where he designed women’s
ready-to-wear for two years, introducing jeans to the venerable house’s collections.
Funded by Pessoa de Queiroz, a Brazilian trust, Versolato set up a workshop on the
Place Vendôme, where he presented his first haute couture collection in 1998.
His label—which makes, among other things, ready-to-wear, and lingerie—has changed
hands several times and is currently finding new backers.
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Haute Couture
In 1858, Charles Worth of
Great Britain, Empress Eugénie’s couturier, moved to the Rue de la Paix and,
towards the end of the nineteenth century, presented his creations on living models.
“Haute Couture”, which stood apart from hand-made garments by its luxurious nature,
quickly became a form of expression practiced by all the great names in fashion history,
including Poiret, Chanel and Balenciaga. Industrial production methods based on American
Taylorism developed in the 1930s and 1940s, and by the 1950s hand-made garments entered
the era of mass production: ready-to-wear was born.
At the same time, haute couture prices continued to climb, partly to factor in expensive
labour costs. Meanwhile, its clientele steadily declined. By the 1980s, haute couture
was being exhibited in museums, raising it to full-fledged art form status. Based
exclusively in Paris and, secondarily, in Italy, where Versace and Valentino have
their own ‘Alta Moda’ lines, haute couture designers present two collections a year
including approximately 60 pieces per couturier, which make headlines in newspapers’
fashion sections around the world. Although haute couture is in the red today, its
prestige allows companies to sell less expensive but more profitable items like ready-to-wear,
handbags, fragrances, watches and eyeglasses.
Haute couture sales may not be rising in volume, but overall the fashion market is
expanding by leaps and bounds. The most powerful groups are Calvin Klein and Ralph
Lauren of the United States, followed by France’s LVMH (Dior, Givenchy, Lacroix)
and, far behind, Italy’s Armani, Gucci and Prada. These companies are still very
discreet about their profits. For comparison’s sake, French designers and couturiers
recorded sales of 20 billion francs ($3.3 billion) in 1997, as opposed to 16 billion
($2.6 billion) for Calvin Klein alone.
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Though too pricey for
the average consumer, Brazilian couturier Ocimar Versolato interweaves multiculturalism
and sensuality to create designs that match women’s dreams
Paris has Japanese,
South Korean, Malian and Moroccan designers, but few people from the South have achieved
the rank of “couturier”.
Fashion design now exists in every country in the world, but I am only the third
designer from the South–after Azzedine Alaïa of Tunisia and Oscar de la Renta
of the Dominican Republic, for the Balmain fashion house–to have achieved the rank
of couturier, recognized by their peers of the Paris haute couture professional trade
body. Until now, that distinction was reserved for Western designers from countries
with a more developed fashion tradition. I was lucky enough to start out at a time
when haute couture was opening up to new talents and encouraging new fashion houses
that were able to express a particular aesthetic sensibility despite their limited
financial resources. So I didn’t suffer from chauvinistic ostracism, in fact, it
was just the opposite. From Italy’s Schiaparelli to Spain’s Balenciaga, haute couture
has always embraced people from different countries. Because Paris is in a class
of its own. It is no more French than New York is American: it belongs to the world.
On the other hand, Parisians are so uptight and demanding that you have to be
really talented to express yourself here.
Do you consider fashion a form of artistic expression?
The couturier is not an artist, but a craftsman with his or her own sensibility.
No artist is expected to change so fast, creating two collections a year. And then,
fashion comes with commercial obligations. My work provides a livelihood for a whole
team: I don’t have the right to run out of inspiration. So people shouldn’t imagine
us as egotistical artists bullied around by financial backers. Fashion is an artistic
industry resulting from compromise rather than tension. Designers and their financial
backers know that they have to move ahead together. Designers can no longer make
their wildest dreams come true and then just forward the bill, like they used to.
If fashion is not an art, then what is it?
Fashion designers and couturiers apprehend the subconscious life of our societies
and go on to represent it with their own particular sensibility. There is a crucial
need for fashion to maintain this transparent channel to people’s sub-conscience,
in order to uncover their hidden desires and give expression to them.That’s why we
don’t look at our surroundings the way others do. Our minds are fast as rockets and
we look at everything through emotional, impassioned eyes. I admire the speed of
videos that give you a maximum amount of information in a minimum amount of time.
Now that’s a truly contemporary language!
How do you justify haute couture prices?
An evening gown, which is entirely sewn by hand so that all the stitches are
invisible, requires hundreds of hours of highly specialized work. Add to that the
employer’s payroll expenses and overhead, and I have to sell it for around 80,000
French francs ($13,300).
In spite of the high prices, is haute couture a profitable business?
My fashion house, like many others, lives off the patronage of approximately
fifty customers. We aren’t losing money, but we aren’t making much, either. Many
houses take advantage of the prestige associated with fashion to sell perfumes and
accessories, which are more immediately profitable. I’ve refused to do that: you
cannot exercise a creative activity with nothing but the profit motive in mind. If
I want to communicate the image of my creation to customers, I must absolutely not
ruin that image by launching, for example, a shampoo with my name on it. Or you have
to justify your approach. Mine starts at the top: I began with haute couture, developed
luxury ready-to-wear clothes and launched my line of jeans, always sticking as close
as possible to my customers’ needs
Your dresses follow the outlines of an ideal woman: the Versolato woman. Do your
customers look like her?
I’m surprised to see how much my customers resemble each other both because of
their age–between 18 and 40–and character. They are self-confident women who do not
feel inhibited about showing their bodies. By choosing my light clothes, which enhance
their character, they feel like they are reaching the perfect balance that defines
elegance. These women come in sneakers and jeans. They put on an evening gown. And
suddenly their postures, their attitudes and even their faces change. They feel beautiful,
they’re no longer the same. I enjoy the fact that haute couture enables me to have
direct contact with my customers, which would hardly be possible in ready-to-wear,
where the only people designers ever meet are buyers.
Too many people cannot afford haute couture...
To offer everybody the pleasure of a purchase, I have created a line of jeans
starting at 400 French francs ($67). Today, the heart of dreams–haute couture–is
on television when the two annual collections take place. In my view, having access
to dreams is more important than possessing the item that nurtures them. When I arrived
in Paris, I had a very tight budget. And yet I visited art galleries, examining everything
I wanted to buy without paying any attention to the price, but trying to picture
what it would look like at home. It’s the same with clothes. You can’t afford to
buy everything you want, but you should at least be given the chance to see what’s
out there and savour the dream inspired by these fashions.
Even though fashion has become an international industry, do the dresses you design
for your customers reflect your origins a little?
They attempt to express the natural seduction which has free rein in Brazil.
My fellow citizens are open, smiling and friendly. They want to seduce everybody
all the time. My dresses bear the mark of a country where people are not ashamed
of their bodies. Whether or not they have perfect looks, Brazilians live almost naked
six months a year, wearing just a pair of shorts or small items. I discovered that
in Europe, on the other hand, the body had to remain hidden. Its cultural tradition
advises against displaying a less-than-perfect chest or wearing a mini-skirt if you
don’t have pretty knees. The couturier in me is trying to treat these traumas.
Brazil is a mixture of ethnic and religious groups. Does your fashion reflect cultural
diversity?
I remember two Arab princesses. The mother, who was rather strict, got upset
when she saw that her daughter was interested in a see-through dress. Until I offered
to add a bodysuit to give a layer of covering. The cultural diversity expressed by
my fashions consists, among other things, of offering sensuality to those who are
deprived of it because of their culture. As for the rest, I’m impervious to race,
except when I can use it as a source of inspiration. I designed an haute couture
collection based on the theme of multicultural melange, dressing Japanese like Africans,
Africans like Russians, and these amusing twists went over well. For fashion is a
world unto itself, free, without prejudices–and therefore open to all kinds of mixing.
As an international form of expression, fashion must integrate all cultures. My team
includes Brazilians, Italians, Japanese and Germans, whose skills round each other
out.
Do people in Brazil and the rest of South America keep up with your career?
I haven’t worked at becoming a sort of star in South America, but fame is part
of my profession. For example, I didn’t think anyone had ever heard of me in Buenos
Aires. So I was totally surprised when television journalists there got in touch
with me. They consider me South American rather than Brazilian, and, as such, a representative
of Argentina.
Does Brazil have an innovative, lively fashion scene?
The reality is that too many people there, as elsewhere in the southern countries,
make copies. More accurately, copies of copies of copies. But Brazil is a country
where anything is possible. Dirt poor provinces exist next to highly developed metropolises
such as São Paulo, where luxury can find some expresion. And Brazilians, like
any other people, are able to show the world their particular sense of aesthetics.
I’m delighted that Brazilian fashion designers have made headway and now have the
courage to show themselves. But they have neither the know-how nor the standards
to be internationally successful. They are naive to the point of designing a whole
collection with a flat pattern, a simple sewing machine and an overcast machine1.
Their clothes don’t have any volume, roundness or sophistication. Nobody ever taught
them how to make a well-tailored jacket.
How can they get out of this dead end?
Brazilians are curious by nature, and they want to learn. I’d like to help them
by encouraging a transfer of techniques. In France, labour in the fashion industry
is in short supply, highly specialized and expensive, while tens of millions of people
are unemployed and looking for work in Brazil. By training some of them in France,
we’d also find a long-term way of improving technical skills and raising standards
back in Brazil which could make quality shoes and clothes for all the designers in
the world.
Are you advocating globalization?
It’s already here. Today, you can design a garment here, assemble it there and
embroider it somewhere else. So you’re better off making the most of what everyone’s
best at. After the war, smart people in overpopulated India opened small embroidery
factories. Today, almost all the embroidery sold around the world comes from India,
and the quality can be as good as it is in Paris.
Have other developing countries specialized in other techniques?
Right now, everything is incredibly centralized in Europe–or in Japan, a country
that can be considered Western. But China has developed techniques for silk, of which
it is the world’s leading producer. One day it will probably have the same state-of-the-art
technology as Europe. And when that day comes, the other countries will tremble.
Does Brazil have any women fashion designers?
Most of the neighbourhood designers are men, but Brazilian women have never come
up against any obstacles to enter the fashion industry. Each one is a designer in
her own right. Gifted with an innate sense of grooming, they know how to dress for
any occasion without falling into stereotypes or ridiculous clichés.
Do women prefer being dressed by men?
Male designers give themselves the freedom to be more daring than their female
counterparts, simply because they don’t have to wear what they create. Their aesthetic
sense blossoms without restraint and their customers, who don’t hesitate putting
on eight-centimeter heels to look beautiful, prefer aesthetics to comfort.
What’s your state of mind when you design your collections?
Couturiers are wrongly described as heartless and inaccessible. On the contrary,
like all creative individuals, they are very sensitive and try to defend their fragility.
If they want to sell dreams, they must find an image of the world that expresses
happiness. So it really doesn’t matter whether they keep their feet on the ground.
Clothing designed by a couturier is different from ordinary ready-to-wear because
of the feelings it conveys. During a fashion show, a dress has just 30 seconds to
express a whole universe.
Have you used your fame to serve useful causes?
I’ve staged a fashion show that people had to pay to see, with the $20,000 in
proceeds going towards the construction of a building for children with cancer. Right
now, I’m working with the photographer Sebastião Salgado on a reforestation
project. The funding will come from a show I’m helping to put on.
1. An overcaster is a
machine used to stitch the edges of two pieces of fabric together.
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