11/05/2023
Our Man in Romania,check 167 Capel Street or
www.h**pcompany.ie
"In school I studied business and economics. But my main passion since I was a little boy was clothes. In high school and university I would buy things in vintage or secondhand shops and, with a good friend who was a tailor, adjust and sell them. After that I was bringing in clothes from China and selling them online from Bucharest. It was a side hustle for pocket money during school.
After completing my master’s degree in international business and management at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, I took a job in Prague in 2016. I was a recruiter and lasted a year and a half. That experience led to a solemn vow that I will never take an office job and I will always work for myself.
I took a sabbatical year in 2017 and went to India for spiritual exploration. I met an Australian couple who talked a lot about h**p and I became intrigued. I knew there was a special place in our village for growing h**p, and I learned Romania had a very long history of industrial h**p processing until all the communist parties fell in Eastern Europe in 1989. When capitalism came in, many of the mills were bought by foreign textile companies and sold for scrap.
I also met a Japanese man in India who had cultivated h**p for 30 years in Nepal, France and India. He told me that the best h**p fabric he ever touched was a piece of Romanian h**p in 1991. This was a eureka moment. I thought: 'Of course! I can go back and work with h**p at home in Romania.' I went home and found a few remaining factories that worked with h**p. I decided on clothes because they were my first love. My company, De IONESCU, has the logo of a cuckoo bird with a h**p-leaf tail because, in our culture, the cuckoo is the symbol of eternal return. I want to revive Romanian h**p."
Read more on this via our Featured Article, letstalkh**p.com/romanian-designer-brings-old-world-styling-to-h**p-fashion!
