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Mercedez Benz Fashion Week Madrid September 2020 - Brand: Malne, Designers: Juanjo Mánez & Paloma Alvarez

Alice Berry - French Fashion Designer

When it comes to the world of fashion, whether you are talking about couture or made to fit (custom fit) clothing for women, there are really two options trendy, cutting edge or classic designs. With the former what was in style last year is no longer fashionable this year and you have to replace those clothes, which means you need to have a big clothing budget and it contributes to the amount of waste that ends up in landfill sites and in turn that contributes to damaging our environment further. With the more classic designs, they are timeless, which means for quality you can afford to pay a bit more, because you do not have to replace your wardrobe every year or every second year. It therefore follows that those clothes are more sustainable in environmental terminology. Even if the original owner decides to one day part ways with quality classic designs, there are plenty of eager buyers in the women’s consignment market.

Recently, Riveting Riffs Magazine sat down with fashion designer Alice Berry of Alice Berry Atelier from Paris, France to talk about her timeless clothing designs for women and the importance she places on her collections being sustainable.

“I think timeless dresses are a better choice, because for example in ten years my customers can always wear them. On the contrary if the dresses are on the cutting edge of fashionRead More

Lingerie & Swimwear from Spain

Dandylion, the joining together of two words by swimwear and lingerie fashion designer Beatriz Lechuga Fuentes from Barcelona, Spain, represents both the name of her brand and the image she wants to project.

She explains, “The name Dandylion was the name of my final collection at university. It represented two sides, dandy and elegant and then the lion, more alternative, powerful and a woman who can do whatever she wants.

I want my designs to make the woman (who wears them) feel powerful. In a way I am fighting for women’s rights. I have talked to a lot of women and doctors who told me there are plenty of women that when they arrive at home they take off their bras and corsetes. The doctors also told me that wire bras cause plenty of problems for women in (contributing to) breast cancer. Now doctors recommend that bras without wire be used, because the pressure caused by the wire on the breasts increasing the chances of cancer. I didn’t know this until two years ago and I went wow!

Women who have had cancer can no longer wear wire bras, so that is why I designed a type of bra that doesn’t have wire.

People can ask for the wire bra, but it is not something I (regularly) produce.Read More

Andra Cora - Fashion Interview

In recent years Riveting Riffs Magazine has been highlight independent fashion designers from different countries and our guest recently was Andra Cora from Valencia, Spain, an autonomous region of the country and whose three largest cities are Valencia, Alicante and Castellón and the region’s population is approximately two million people.

Andra Cora talks about the influences that are reflected in the women’s clothing that she designs, “I like the romantic drama of the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries and the structural silhouettes of the 1940s and ‘50s. The silhouettes and construction lines inspire me, but also the social (implications) within the historical context.

I incorporate the past into the present to create the future Nowadays making an impression is increasingly complicated, especially if your work is focused more on handmade, as mine is and not focused on technology.”

There is an elegant charm about Andra Cora’s clothing that appeals to the feminine side of women and yet the designs also have a boldness and strength about them.Read More

_{Creators of Angelina Ballerina}

Author Katharine Holabird and illustrator Helen Craig started collaborating decades ago on Angelina Ballerina children’s books that now are on maybe their second or third generation of young readers, certainly their second generation of parents (sorry ladies we could not think of another way to convey the timeline). The books have been adapted to a musical stage presentation and also two television animated series, years apart. At the urging of their publisher Simon & Schuster they have begun creating chapter books based on the same characters. In recent days, Katharine Holabird has also embarked on a new adventure (we thought she would like that word!) as she collaborates with illustrator Sarah Warburton for the books based on the character of Twinkle, a fairy. Katharine Holabird sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine over Zoom for a conversation recently about her books and how she got started as a writer.

I started writing when I was a child, because I always liked to make up stories and right them down. I was the family storyteller. I grew up with three sisters and we were always acting out stories, making things up and dancing around the house. I just loved writing. I was writing about horses and princesses at that time. I was reading anything about animals. I think my favorite book as a child was Charlotte’s Web, because she could understand what the animals were saying to each other.

In those days there wasn’t TV so I was reading all of the Oz books (editor’s note: initially by L. Frank Baum and following his death later the mantle was taken up by authors Ruth Plumly Thompson, John R. Neill, Jack Snow Read More

Paloma del Pozo - Spanish Designer

It was a Friday afternoon in February when I left the Melia Princesa Hotel in Madrid walked to the estacion de metro Ventura Rodriguez and made my way by train to another station Gran Via – Pedro Zorolo. It was a sunny day and the open square, like so many in Madrid was bustling in a good way. There was energy, laughter and a lot of people in this city of seven million. I was on my way to Calle de las Huertas, Number 5, fashion designer Paloma del Pozo’s shop. Like many of the shops in this neighborhood of narrow winding cobblestone and pavement streets, the shop Ojalá Paloma del Pozo has a somewhat modest storefront, but it is full of treasures inside.

My journey to interview this warm, delightful woman began several months earlier when I noticed a fabulous blouse that was worn by Spanish television, film and stage actress Silvia Marso. When I commented on Ms. Marso’s Instagram account about the blouse, she immediately without my asking directed me to Paloma del Pozo. The interview was arranged by her equally warm and personable assistant Sara.

So here I found myself thousands of miles at home surrounded by blouses, skirts, dresses and slacks rich in texture and colorful and in the presence of two fabulous women.

“We don’t make a collection,” says Paloma del Pozo, “We make what we want. We don’t have the sameRead More

Charlott Axenström - Swedish Designer

When you are a little girl growing up in a tiny village in the very far north of Sweden where during the middle of the winter you may only have at most two hours of daylight and you are in some of the best ski country in Sweden, one supposes like most children you turn to sports or music. Charlotte Axenström became an avid skier, something she still enjoys today, but her imagination and creativity, also took her in another direction.

“It was kind of boring,” Charlott Axenström says chuckling, “I think that was the key (to where this all began), you are so bored and it is so dark. I am a skier and a swimmer and I was into clothes. I started sketching clothes when I was five years of age. I think when you have so much time to think about it you (become good at what you are doing). That is what I tell my daughter you have to be bored (first) to be good. If you have everything just in front of you there is no reason for your brain to work.”

“I grew up in the same village in northern Sweden as Ingemar Stenmark the skier (Editor’s note: Ingemar Stenmark won more international ski races than any other skier in history, including eighty-six World Cup wins). I think with it being dark for twenty-two hours every day (in the winter) that was part of the creative process. Yes it is dark and you are out skiing, but you also stay home a lot. In the summer I was outside all of the time. From April until September you don’t sleep that much (Editor’s note: there is almost continual daylight),” she says. Read More

All written material, all photographs and all designs are protected by copyright © and patents by the writers, photographers, editors, designers, musicians, songwriters musicians and filmmakers who contribute to Riveting Riffs Magazine or have by consent allowed their work to be exhibited in Riveting Riffs Magazine, and / or Riveting Riffs Magazine and Joe Montague. Use of any material that appears in Riveting Riffs Magazine, without the written permission of the publisher and where applicable other rights holders, is strictly prohibited and is subject to legal action. This includes the reprinting, in whole or in part on the internet, by photocoping, reposting on blogs or other websites or magazines or newspapers that appear in print or quoting more than 200 words of any one composition, on terrestrial radio, internet radio, satellite radio, webcasts or television.