Romania’s minister of culture has said she will ask Louis Vuitton to acknowledge the seemingly Romanian roots of a blouse included in its 2024 collection, after the French luxury fashion house was accused of “cultural appropriation”.
Earlier this week La Blouse Roumaine, an online collective dedicated to promoting the intricately embroidered Romanian blouse known as the ie, called out Louis Vuitton for “violating the cultural rights” of several communities after it debuted a similar blouse without acknowledging its status as a symbol of Romania’s folk culture.
On social media, it requested that Louis Vuitton remove the pieces until it could obtain agreement to use the cultural design and credit it appropriately.
“We need to protect our intangible cultural heritage. It’s our cultural right to express our identity through these garments, through these traditional costumes,” Andreea Diana Tanasescu, the founder of La Blouse Roumaine, told Associated Press. “They are part of Romanian history.”
The Blouse Roumaine shop, established in 2013 to allow artisans to sell their products, went further, accusing the French fashion house of “cultural appropriation” and calling on it to give credit to the source of its inspiration. While designer pieces often sell for exorbitant prices, they “strip away the cultural significance, authenticity and the stories woven into each thread by the hands of skilled Romanian artisans”, it added.
The country’s minister of culture weighed in soon after. “We will request that Louis Vuitton recognise the heritage and cultural value of the traditional blouse model with ribbons,” Raluca Turcan wrote on Facebook late on Monday, describing it as an opportunity to foster international recognition of the “inestimable value” of Romanian tradition.
Scandalul iei Louis Vuitton. Turcan spune că va contacta casa de modă pentru „recunoaşterea valorii patrimoniale”
— Libertatea (@libertatea) June 4, 2024
Citiți aici: https://t.co/Gp3scVhLrF#ştiri #știriromânia #ministerulculturii #ralucaturcan
On Wednesday, the ministry of culture did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Louis Vuitton.
The spotlight on the simply cut, richly embroidered blouse comes two years after it was added to Unesco’s list of intangible cultural heritage.
It’s not the first time, however, that fashion houses have been accused of taking inspiration from Romania without credit. In 2017, La Blouse Roumaine called out the US designer Tory Burch over the similarities between a traditional Romanian-style coat and one of the items included in her 2018 resort collection.
Its campaign was backed by thousands of Romanians, many of whom were incensed after it emerged that the garment was being marketed as being inspired by Africa.
Burch later changed the item’s description, saying that during the process of summarising the collection, “we missed a reference to a beautiful Romanian coat which inspired one of the pieces”.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
