MRS. MO VELD

On June 4th, 2010, a sunny friday afternoon in Amsterdam’s romantic zoo Artis, I had this lovely interview with Diesel’s former creative kingpin Wilbert Das, for Blend magazine. A recommended read if you’re into those 3 P’s, People, Planet, Profit, yet without the inflated Preacher ego. He’s just a great guy with great people skills who’s loving his new Brazilian eco-resort Uxua Casa.

one of the stylishly handcrafted UXUA Casas

Wilbert Das (born 1963) has been ‘the Dutchman at Diesel’ for just about as long as we all know about this Italian über-brand. Twenty-one years to be exact. When news hit that he was stepping out from behind Renzo Rosso to leave the iconic company he helped create as its 360 degrees creative director, all heads turned to his ‘holiday-hobby project’, the Uxua Casa Hotel in Brazil. Like: now we’re talking successful living.

The Uxua Casa Hotel in Trancoso, a tiny coastal village in Bahia, northeastern Brazil, is a cluster of eight separate ‘casas’ and a treehouse, all renovated, rebuilt and restyled using local craftsmen and amplified traditional techniques. Hidden in lush tropical gardens with a full 5-star infrastructure including restaurant, spa, private beach lounge and a healing quartz pool, this luxurious eco-loco getaway is little short of a paradise. A very personal paradise no less, realized by someone who, when it comes to fashionably styled hotels for one, has pretty much seen it all. If Uxua is Wilbert Das’s next step after everything he created at Diesel, which is not just the many clothing and accessories lines, but also the campaigns, showrooms, flagship stores, the Miami hotel, fragrances and in the end furniture, it looks and feels like quite the antidote to all the brash young and trendy violence he’s been responsible for all his professional life. With all the time in the world on his hands these days it wasn’t hard to lure him to the retro-romantic Amsterdam zoo Artis for a good long Style of Life chat.

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On June 24 the book Fashion Blogs - on musings about personal taste to style reports around the globe - will be launched at SPRMRKT, one of Amsterdam’s greatest fashion stores.

photography by Krista van der Niet

Writer Kirstin Hanssen, designer Felicia Nitzsche and co-writer Elina Tozzi invited me to write the introduction to one of Fashion Blogs chapters called ’seen on the streets’ to which I happily obliged. Now I’m finally holding a copy in my hand I must say, although books like this tend to be outdated by the time they hit the shelves, this is a great ‘time capsule’ document, not to mention the first on the subject, exploring the international fashion blogging pioneers. Apart from the profiles and interviews with a cross section of today’s influential bloggers in various niches, some 600 fashion blog url’s are listed. Naturally it is published in english, so if you spot a copy, do have a peek!

The press release I wrote for this project is in Dutch so translated in short: Holland’s one and only star-catwalk photographer Peter Stigter started Peter Stigter aan de Muur, a foundation through which he will sell a selection of his free and unpublished work: unique catwalk and fashion week images captured by the master’s eye. From mid-november 2009 these limited edition king size prints, courtesy of Canon, are sold via www.peterstigteraandemuur.nl
All profit will be donated to local organisations helping the blind and partially sighted.