RALUFINEART INTERVIEW with VPRCOM MAGAZINE

Hello my lovelies,

I am proud to share with you RaluFineArt interview with Vprcommag Magazine that was out few days ago! 🔝❤️❤️❤️🔝

US VPRCOMMAG is sharing some of the best fashion weeks, events and social media strategists content in the market. They publish quality content relating to the sustainable luxury lifestyle, from fashion to travel and everything else in between. Proud for my business to be featured among so many other fashion designers. Many thanks for choosing my business and giving me this opportunity ❤️❤️❤️ Interested to read it ? 

Historically, fashion has rarely been elevated to the same stature as art, photography, music, sculpture or architecture. But fashion is one of the purest expressions of art because it is art lived on a daily basis. … Fashion only exists as long as there is an actor to incarnate it. In that way, it is performance art.

The convergence of art and fashion is symbiotic. Everything that exists and surrounds us is a product of the society we live in. Who we are, what we see, and what we experience is interconnected and interrelated. There is no place we can point to and say that this or that object does not belong to the sphere of art.

Malina Catoiu, originally from Romania, now living in Luxembourg, can tell us much about a photography culture as ethical lifestyle through her dresses and clothing articles as individual and collective expression. By combining different mediums to make art, she is able to transcend our lives and in the process connect to the essence and universality of who we are.

The name of RaluFineArt comes from her first name, Raluca, as her parents used to call her ‘Ralu’ and since childhood she had a passion for music and art.

RaluFineArt is about photography combined with fine art + design products for accessories, lifestyle, home decor, wall art and more. The brand is committed to raise awareness about the endangered species and deforestation. A percentage of the sales will go as donations to different organizations to contribute to planting trees, save endangered species and other actions trying to make a better world. For more, visit + shop RaluFineArt here: https://www.ralufineart.com

We were more than excited to have an exclusive interview with Ralu x VPRCOM Magazine:

When did you first realize you wanted to launch RALUFINEART?

Since childhood I had a passion for music and the field of art. Since I was 24 y.o. I wanted to have my own company. Other offers came from banking system and I decided at that time to pursue with my banking career. In 2018 I felt is the time for me to take seriously my ideas and make my dreams become a reality. I’ve always admired my grandma who almost all her life loved to create clothes and designed new models. I looked at her many years how many beautiful things came out of her creative mind and hands: exquisite wedding dresses, luxury costumes, classy dresses, purses, blouses and so on. 

So this idea played in my mind since I started to enter in competitions for photography. I wanted to bring my photos and the world beauty in our daily life. Also I wanted to bring the history and present together and inspired by my grandma work to continue with my own story in my own style. It took me several months to brainstorm together with my husband and from Q4 2018 I worked on my shop to launch it in June 2019. However only from October 2019 I started to be fully engaged and take it in my hands as full time activity. 

If you could go back and tell yourself one thing before beginning your career what would it be? 

Enjoy life more than I’ve done in between 20 y.o. and 40 y.o.; I’ve been all my life a workacholic person. Don’t get me wrong I have no regrets for my career which it was the career I have chosen and I have done most of the time only the jobs I wanted to do. When I got bored or I wanted to change I changed. All the things I have done shaped my personality and helped me to improve my competences and skills. 

How my life would have been if in my 20’s I would have created my own business? Well definitely my life would have been very much different than it is today. 

But some important things I would say to the younger me: 

• to not care about what anyone says or thinks about me; just follow my heart and put myself first
• that I need to love myself first and be happy with myself in order to be happy with all the rest around me; happiness comes from inside us and I learnt this as the time passed
• be patient with others and trust the process and the time 
• be less shy. What people don’t know about me is that I am an introvert person that I had to work a lot on my personality to act as an extrovert when I considered it was needed in my life. But my family knows me well I was shy, sensitive and dynamic with a volcano inside me  
• and the last thing… to forgive more; the world is made from bits and pieces. 

What role do you think social media plays in art industry today?

The online art market has increased a lot during the last years, exhibits are organized virtually, art and antiques auctions are organized more and more online, artists are showing their artwork on Instagram and other channels and through the social media channels they get the chance to expose their artwork, share their skills and technics through behind the scenes videos or stories; plus we see more and more artists that started to teach online.

Instagram has the highest engagement rates of all the social media platforms and those who are using it they see it and they feel it. Art buyers are there using Instagram. In the past when the social media did not exist the artists mainly looked into the direction of the art critics to determine the value of their art and for them to endorse positively or negatively their artwork. Today with Instagram artists can put forward their artwork and in the same time to get the endorsement from their audiences.

And what’s happening on these platforms is pure gold for them. Artists speak with their followers about themselves, sharing about their art values, how they make it, their followers can inquire on a specific art work and in an instant it’s sold. 

And when I mention artists and their artwork I am referring here to fields like drawing (by the way illustrators accounts exploded on Instagram), painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, film, print making, and digital art to name a few. I am one of them who I am using extensively photography and the digital technologies, digital tools, digital printing in my work and for my collections. 

Not to mention museums that look at the trends on social media, at curator pages and posts and use the user generated content to plan exhibitions; moreover they ask people to vote and rank the artwork collections. There is so much leverage for the artists with the social media today. Social Media is redefining the way the art industry works as a business. 

We have seen that digital technologies expanded the art field and social media is reshaping the art world from different points of view like creation process (artists ask for the feedback of their audiences in the process of making), curation process, marketing and sales process. And we see that artists no longer rely solely on the galleries and the art critics to validate their success; the artists started in parallel to play both dealer and curator roles while their followers become critics and collectors. The masses of people following their accounts are the proof they need to continue with what they love to do and with the right engagement from their followers, artists can make a living out of their artwork in a more sustainable way. 

How do you want your clients to feel when wearing RALUFINEART pieces and in what occasions can be worn?

In the fashion accessories and lifestyle collections I have both all year long and seasonal items. From the seasonal items you can pick for example weekender bags or beach bags, swimwear and beach towels.

I have always been a fan of over-sized bags. They are the perfect functional accessory; they are bigger and better because you can fit in everything you want. Their practicality is endless. You fit pretty much everything you like: your lunch, your water bottle, iPad, gym kit, beach towel and many other things that will make their way into the bag. 

You can wear my weekender bags with jeans, casual outfits, summer t-shirts. They are perfect for going for shopping or coming from the beach, as picnic bag or even daily bags to carry your daily essentials. Due to their design the weekender bags are fun and also part of the street style vibe. They go well with monochromatic black and white ensembles and sneakers or you can wear them going to the beach with a beach dress or shorts. 

Depending on the model chosen you could pair them to a white cotton summer dress, a denim dress. You wouldn’t say no to match them to your black leggings or biker shorts. My weekender bags definitely give you options; you can pair them with the beach towels (same model) and for some with the swimwear and the scarves. They make anyone cheerful and happy. 

When it comes about scarves, they are not limited to one season, they can be worn all year long; they are the most versatile, fashionable and practical accessory and they can be worn and used in a varied number of ways.

When designing my models I transform the beauty found in our world into wearable art and I imagine the woman wearing my pieces to be full of life, have a rich, vivid and warm look. I imagine that woman to wear the world beauty wrapped around her face or shoulders have that eye-catching look and feel the vibrations of the earth. 

The joy of seeing my clients wearing my pieces brings out the exact same emotion I want them to feel wearing them. The best thing about my products is their vibration and their effect. 

Can you tell us how your product makes a difference on accessories market?

Love your question. Accessorizing can make or break an outfit so it’s not something that should be overlooked. As Coco Channel said once: Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only’ 

I see accessories to offer unlimited opportunities for styling an outfit and allow expressing yourself. One of the things I notice first is not the clothes but the accessories and if those have been accessorized them in style. 

With my products, my accessories I bring a personal style that belongs to me as individual and it’s my self-expression to how I see the beauty in this world. By itself a bag or a scarf may not have so much effect but how you accessorize it to the whole outfit. And what I like about them is the fact that 10 people could wear the same accessories and yet they match them differently and make their own statements. 

This makes me think of a particular scarf I have in my collection named ‘Autumn Leaves’. This scarf never stops to amaze me. Due to the design and pigmentation, depending on the light, shadows, sun light reflection, artificial light…this scarf is changing the colors. You can have so many nuances with this scarf depending on the moment of the day or night you are wearing it, depending if you are inside or outside. It’s absolutely gorgeous. 

My designs are original, unique and versatile. What I want to bring with my accessories and my designs is that connection in between nature, our world and people. And creating stylish and timeless fashion accessories allows me to connect on a different level with the people. You can wear them in so many ways and adapt them to the street style, classic, elegant style or smart casual style. When you wear RaluFineArt accessories you literally wear a piece of art, unique designs each one of them telling a unique story.

What do you think is the biggest challenge for a fine art creative?

Well….I can answer from my personal perspective. But I am only one among many other artists so each path is different and each person career is different. There are many challenges at many levels and it depends on each person skills, passion, dedication….there are challenges in breaking-through, becoming an established artist and making a living out of art. So the challenges that an artist may face are many. It can be difficult for some to find work in the art field or they find it difficult to market and sell their artwork. The industry and market is extremely competitive. 

Above all of these I believe that making art and selling art is no different than any other business. It’s all about finding the people interested in seeing, appreciating and buying the artist’s art. I think the greatest challenge for a fine art creative is to ......

Read more on https://www.vprcommag.com/2021/02/ralufineart-we-need-to-slow-down-to-see-beauty-around-us/

Thank you so much VPRCOM Magazine for selecting my business and my brand. 

Whoop! Whoop! To more days like this!

Ralu

Founder&Designer RaluFineArt