Made in the Czech Republic
Every year, dozens of industry and fashion designers graduate in the Czech Republic, ready to make change happen. But the producers believe they can get along just as fine without them. Therefore they use a company worker with decent artistic skills to do the job; he adds a cross bar to a chair or more gold to a glass and the production goes on, while designers are leaving the sector in droves, having no work to do.
Many Czech manufacturers still follow socialist-era production models. (COURTESY) A full figure surely looks appealing. Especially if wearing custom-made clothes. But the clothes offered by a company from the Zlín region were not pretty. Even the label „oversized clothing“ wasn't the best way to describe them. They looked much more like oversized nylon sacks covered with prints of realistic-looking large orchids. This stall was not rare among others at the „fashion“ (better using quotes) fair Styl in Brno; it looked like the majority of the Czech clothing firms draws inspiration from Burda archives.
This experience is about three years old, but it has been repeated many times ever since. The same happened at the fashion fair Móda Praha, or in a slightly different version at Pragointeriér or Mobitex, as well as at furniture and home accessories fairs, and bathrooms and housing fairs, everywhere where the best Czech products should be displayed. Instead the fairgrounds featured large sofas with upholstery that looked worn out already three days after the opening, cutlery with grips featuring traditional folklore motifs known as cibulák, a chandelier that would best fit in at the National Theatre etc. They were mostly designs that could hardly appeal to the growing number of rich and demanding Czechs. They are not of better quality than others and yet they look remarkably outdated.
It's no…
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