Two events in Luxembourg on June 24 to celebrate the Romanian Blouse Day!

Universal day of the Romanian Blouse

The Romanian community in Luxembourg is celebrating for the third time the Romanian Blouse, called IA. The first festivities will take place on Wednesday 24 June from 7pm in Place Clairefontaine and will include Romanian traditional singing and dancing, followed by informal networking.

All participants are encouraged to wear a Romanian blouse and should expect a relaxed evening filled with fun, music and great people, getting ready to pose for a special “Ia Day” photo-session.

On the day of the event, Romanian folkloric dancing group “Carpatii”, led by Horatiu Dragan, will be there to showcase some of Romania’s finest traditional dances and invite participate to the famous  Romanian “hora”.

For more details, visit the event’s Facebook page.

“Afterwork Ia Day Party”

Once the “Ia Day” celebrations are officially launched in Place Clairefontaine, the Romanian community and their international friends have the opportunity to attend a second event called “Afterwork Ia Day Party” at Luxembourg’s White House Club. There, event participants will be enchanted by the fashion designs of Valentina Vidrascu, a Bucharest-based designer renown for creating folklore-inspired outfits and for her interpretations of the traditional Romanian blouses.

For more details, visit the event’s Facebook page.

La Blouse Roumaine in short:

The Romanian Peasant Blouse is a representative piece of the country’s folklore. Rooted in an idyllic past, Romanian women carried on the tradition of sewing peasant blouses. With manual embroidery, just one blouse could take up to 3 weeks to be completed. IA preserves tradition through its ornaments which highlight the differences in age, social status and life events. The structure of the Romanian blouse has remained unchanged over the centuries.

In 1940, the famous French painter, Henri Matisse, created an important series of paintings which portrayed women in Romanian blouses. Despite the decreasing number of Romanian women who create these authentic pieces of art, the beauty and handmade embroidery of peasant blouses inspired several designers, like Karl Lagerfeld, Tom Ford and John Galliano.

In 2013, over 24,000 people, in 50 countries, across six continents, chose to participate in the day of the Romanian Blouse. In many cities around the world, Romanian women wore IA and then posted their pictures on Facebook.

The day of the Romanian blouse was launched by an online community and is celebrated every year on June 24, which equally marks the Day of Sânziene.