2. “My customer in Brazil is someone looking for something different,
something that isn't necessarily a trend. People looking for real
designers, who develop materials and colors and mix them in unique
ways. People who desire new things, and new ways of expressing
themselves and communicating something through their clothing.
That's the person who wears my clothes. This is the same customer I
see elsewhere.”
Alexandre Herchcovitch
3. Timeline
1971 – Born in San Paulo, Brasil
1993 – Graduates at Santa Marcelina College of Arts
1993 – Presents his first ready-to-wear collection
1999 – First time at London Fashion Week
2005 – Invited at New York Fashion Week
2006 – Becomes Chief Director of FMU
2009 – Collaboration with Rosa Cha
4.
5. Alexandre Herchcovitch
Alexandre Herchcovitch is a Brazilian fashion designer. His family came from Poland, but he was
st
born in San Paulo, Brazil, on July, the 21 , 1971.
When he was only ten, he apparently had already decided that he would have become a fashion
designer.
His mother gave him some modeling and sewing lessons, and he began to make real clothes,
including the dresses that his mother wore when going out at night.
After that, she encouraged him to start and sell his clothes to some family friends.
He attended a very traditional school, the local Orthodox Jewish school, but at the same time he
always liked to go the very alternative San Paolo clubs. Both of these experiences had a strong
influence in his future works.
In 1993, he graduated at the Santa Marcelina College of Arts. The same year he presented his
first ready-to-wear collection.
Since the beginning, he showed a very original approach to fashion. As a source of inspiration, he
used Brazilian history and local folklore, combined with a lot of formal research. A visual
element which ended up distinguishing Herchcovitch aesthetics was the wide use of skulls in his
patterns and accessories.
In 1999 he was called to present his collection in London, in the English Fashion Week.
Then, it came Paris, and the French loved him too.
Now, since 2005, his collections are presented on the runways of the New York Fashion Week.
Still, they can be seen twice a year on the San Paulo Fashion Week catwalks.
Alexandre Herchcovitch dream is “to achieve full creative freedom”, as he said to a French
journalist some time ago.
Among the designer favorite pieces of his whole career we find the “skusers”, a t-shirt with legs
attached, he created in 2002, and the “pomba gira” print, which he made in 2006, inspired by a
creature of Brazilian folklore.
Nowadays, he's no doubt the most famous Brazilian fashion designers.
He owns two big stores in San Paulo, which look like art galleries much more than usual clothes
stores. He's recently opened his first store in Tokyo. His brand has a virtual shop as well, on the
web.
6. Apart from being the fashion designer behind his own brand, he's also a fashion consultant for
the Zoomp, a company leader in fashion retail in Brazil.
He cooperated with quite a big number of brands, both Brazilian and not. Among them we can
cite Lupo (socks and underwear), Melissa (shoes), Motorola (mobile phones), Hello Kitty and
Tilibra (exercise books)
Since 2006, he's also Chief Director of the FMU – Faculty of Fashion – in Sao Paulo.
Finally, a few months ago, Rosa Cha, a Brazilian beachwear brand, worldwide famous,
announced that had hired Alexander Herchcovitch to design its upcoming collections.
We can bet we'll hear even more from him in the future, since Herchcovitch is fast becoming a
big and serious name in the fashion world.
7.
8.
9. Resources
T. Jones, A. Mair, Fashion Now, Taschen, 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Herchcovitch
http://herchcovtichloja.com.br
http://herchcovitch.uol.com.br
http://nymag.com/fashion/fashionshows/designers/bios/alexandreherchcovitch/
