Stop the unpunished habit of cultural appropriation

We looked back at other recent examples of cultural appropriation in fashion: Stella McCartney used traditional African motives in her Summer/Spring 2018 collection. Louis Vuitton debuted a line of blankets, worn as coats by the people of Besotho, as part of their menswear collection, and many more.

We created Bihor Couture, the first brand that fights against cultural appropriation.

It aims to return money to the local communities by selling authentic fashion pieces on a digital platform.

We promoted the digital shop by launching an entertaining fashion content series featuring the most eccentric designers so far.

Then, we targeted international celebrities interested in Dior with customized message videos from the local creators in Bihor. And even sent an invitation to Dior to come to Bihor and design a new jacket with our creators.

Overall budget: 7000 eur

Breakdown of costs:

Shooting Romania & Paris Fashion Week 5.000 eur

Editing Costs 500 eur

Website 1.500 eur

Paid media budget (where applicable): 0

We launched the new brand with a fashion video content series, featuring the original designers from Bihor, commenting on Dior’s collection, the same one where the jacket from Bihor was included.

The series was highly entertaining, with juicy comments from our local creators, and it could be watched on Facebook and YouTube.

Then, we created print ads featuring our designers and targeted international celebrities interested in Dior, like Lady Gaga or Beyoncé, with customized messages from our local creators.

What followed was an invitation to Dior to come to Bihor and design a new coat with our designers.

We even made it to Paris Fashion Week, proudly wearing the coat from Bihor and thus, making a statement to the entire world of fashion.

The campaign made a huge impact, with people storming the website and placing hundreds of orders for traditional clothes. Presently, more craftsmen are being brought into the platform, to work on all the orders that keep on coming.

Pre-orders were made to cover the work for the next 4,5 years.

Beau Monde also raised money to fund the only craftsmen school in Bihor, to attract more young people that can learn the craft and it further in the future.

So the tradition lives on.

We give people, especially fashion people, the most direct & sustainable experience of fashion: access the original product, connect with the artisan, and support the artisan and its tradition.

In the same time we launched an alarm signal towards the big brands that commit cultural appropriation without giving credit to local artisans.

We needed to make the original designers known in the entire world. We also wanted to promote the authentic fashion pieces, in a unique way, making them appealing to everybody, including a younger target and people who are not familiarized with Romanian traditions.

This is why we built an online shop, that can be accessed by everyone in the world.

To promote the new brand, we used the fashion critique format with fashion experts, and instead invited the local creators from Bihor to talk about Dior’s collection, as the real experts of the jacket.

Bihor is a small region in Romania rich in traditions. They created a famous coat that was copied by Dior and sold for 30.000 euro, without mentioning the source of inspiration.

When designers give no credit to their inspiration, there is no return for the poor communities that struggle to keep the traditions. And the traditions die.

Beau Monde, the fashion magazine with 100% Romanian content, wanted to help authenticity survive and take a stand against cultural appropriation.

Cultural Appropriation = the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, without showing that you understand or respect this culture (Cambridge Dictionary).