Today I am starting a new post on my website/blog where I look back to the past and remember all the work that I’ve done in 30 years working in the fashion industry. I knew since as a 3-year-old I wanted to express myself through fashion and art. I was born and raised seeing my mother sewing for her clientele. My mother was my biggest inspiration to become what I am today. I learned everything with her, to be a professional, be a mother, to be brave, to be me! I started my career as a model in 1976. OMG! Take a look at my pictures from that time. So today I decided to start posting some of the first work I did as a model and when I opened my first business a fashion company name Rottulo. My mom and I worked at our company for 11 years. We started in our basement and within a few years we had employed 200+ people.
In the 1980s fashion was one of the most experimental periods in style history. I remember clothes were used to define personalities and make big statements even more than now. Fashion wasn’t “fast-fashion” (like fast-food) and disposable, there were local people working together that were very passionate about the product. The shoulders were padded right up to your ears! No doubt about it, it was a crazy era. The ’80s was a decade of bold style, colors, and geometric silhouettes (also permed hair was must-have! Check out how curly my hair was, but with an almost triangular shape to it), with trends that went from ripped tights and leather, to polished oversized blazers. 10 years later I started my first fashion company with my mom. The name of the brand was ROTTULO. At that time we created and manufactured women and men’s fashion and jeanswear apparel. In that time didn’t have computers or the internet, it was a very different time from today. Everything was made BY HAND from scratch. The jeanswear in Brazil was getting bigger and we had a lot of success. This is an invitation postcard I created for my winter collection in 1986 to invite multi-brand store-owners to go our showroom to make purchases to sell in their stores. (you can see more of the invitation designs I created below)
At that time I was married, a mother of 2 kids and kind of celebrity in the fashion industry in Brazil. I found some of the interviews for newspapers that were published at that time. I feel so glad to have saved them, so I can post them and reminisce the good old days!
That’s all for today. I will be continuing posting these, but it takes some time to find all this in boxes LOL – Thanks for reading!
