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Cosmopolitan to a T
By Nadine Kam
Star-BulletinCall it pidgin for the eyes. Anyone trying to guess the origins of the radical T-shirts that began appearing here a couple years ago might have have described the look as surfer chic or Pucci gone punk.
With a bold patchwork of designs ranging from Asian dragons and hotrod flames to tattoo imagery and '60s mod prints, the look reads California meets Japan in Hawaii.
That's the beauty of Custo Barcelona's cultural shorthand. With tops from Custo's summer collection incorporating 250 to 300 different prints from many cultures, it's understandable that in Japan, people think Custo's T-shirts look Japanese, while in Morocco, wearers embrace the garments' Mediterranean colors as their own. It's the same in 48 other countries where the line is sold.
In the store
Who: Custo Dalmau meets customers
"The spirit of the collection is cosmopolitan," said designer Custo Dalmau, in town and meeting customers at Neiman-Marcus today. "To have a new flavor, you have to mix the ingredients."
Although the Internet is credited for having broadened horizons, shortened distances and made communication instantaneous, Dalmau is clearly a man 20 years ahead of his time. Rather than traveling virtually, however, he's put in the legwork.
"I've been traveling since I was 10 years old. The spirit of our work is in traveling and mixing cultures."
Custo Dalmau and his brother David introduced Custo Barcelona in Europe in 1980. Prior to that, Dalmau had traveled as an Olympics gymnast and at 16, in an homage to the late naturalist Felix Rodriguez de la Fuente, he asked Yamaha to sponsor a journey around the world by motorcycle. The trip ended when he was 19."When you're 19 years old and on a motorcycle, you see many things that will influence you for the rest of your life."
Dalmau had planned to study architecture, but a trip to California convinced him otherwise. He saw bold graphics being screen-printed onto T-shirts, a process unknown in Spain at the time.
"I was always attracted by graphic design, and to print it on a T-shirt was an exotic new thing.
"It was a good way to send messages and communicate. The T-shirt is the garment of the 20th century."
After Europe, spreading the dialogue to America was easy. Prices are $48 to $108 for tops, $108 to $119 for dresses and $150 for pants, and Hollywood came calling early, picking up shirts for films and such youth-oriented networks as E! and MTV, and TV series like "Friends" and "Dharma & Greg."
Dalmau said that Americans -- though seemingly different by region -- do share a common identity linked by mass media.
"Here, if the press is interested in something, it becomes very big, very fast. In Europe, each country, each press has its own identity. If something is big in Italy, it's not necessarily going to be big in France or Germany. Each culture is very strong."
He believes Italy is the toughest market for foreign fashion houses to crack, calling it a "hermetic market," but says, "we are doing very well there."
While defying the limits of national boundaries, Custo Barcelona also seeks to cross age and gender barriers. Fans include girls and women 12 to 70 years old, and Dalmau said he's been surprised to see men wear them. He didn't intend the garments to be unisex, but now that men have shown interest, Custo Barcelona will be coming out with a men's line in the fall, while continuing to expand the women's line with more separates.
And as for those travels, Dalmau is still on the road eight months a year, jotting down ideas in a notebook or napkin, whatever he has on hand. He heads next to Mongolia and will likely spend a month in Japan. Places he'd like to visit include many parts of Africa and islands of the South Pacific.
"I'd like to know the planet."
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