Fragrantly Beautiful

Designer touts beauty of linen

By Kathryn Wexler
Miami Herald

"Wrinkles are beautiful," says Adolfo Dominguez, sitting in the lounge of the Setai Hotel in South Beach, Fla., during a recent business trip.

The Spanish designer could well be talking about creases of the face, he says later. But at the moment, he is repeating his motto of two decades, speaking to the splendor of linen: the fabric (and its wrinkles) that made him famous.

"They'll always be beautiful."

In Europe and parts of Asia, Dominguez, 56, is a big deal. His publicly traded company has more than 330 boutiques worldwide. He recently designed new uniforms for the Spanish airline Iberia.

But he has a single shop in the United States, Adolfo Dominguez, on the second floor of the Village of Merrick Park, in Coral Gables, Fla., and open less than two years. Now he is preparing to close that boutique and open a bigger one on the third floor. Others will likely follow in Miami or the southern states, where the warm weather and style sensibility fit his line, he says.
"My thought is opening close to the border at first," says Dominguez, slight of build, and wearing an oatmeal cashmere sweater and white linen pants.

Dominguez made his mark in the ready-to-wear industry in the 1980s with linen garments that wrinkled with the weather. It was a material from his childhood; his grandmother grew it and sewed with it.

But using the fabric for formal wear was a radical step at a time when you weren't considered well-dressed if your clothing wasn't meticulously pressed.

"When I started to sell linen," he says, "I had to persuade people."

Selling flaxen clothing today requires a different kind of persuasion. The rough, natural fabric often conjures up tiresome, potato-sack dresses or boxy shirts. But there's none of that all-too-quaint beachy stuff in Dominguez's collections, made from exquisite blends, smart tailoring and up-to-the-minute cuts.

His styling is city all the way. In fact, many of his creations will have you checking the labels to see if linen is even listed; to wit, a sleek silvery evening gown, $633, and a paint-splattered arty sundress, $233.

Many articles in his high-end and diffusion line (called U, for "urban,") are hand-printed, with all the intimacy and endearing irregularities the method affords. His colors hum.
"In anything, you need to put poetry inside," he says. "That's my style: functionality with poetry inside."

AmbrosiaServices.com

Get a Free Yoga e-Book & Free Report

posted by Cheryl Levesque @ 12:56 PM