Shift-Dress

March 2008
12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031

We Feel This

E-mail
Mobile
RSS
Blogs
Trust us, you want these
newsletters.
I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its User Agreement and Privacy Policy.
Get fashion on your cell via our
mobile alerts.
I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its User Agreement and Privacy Policy.
Now..Now.. Now

Need it, want it, have... no time to wait.

Get your fashion, get it now, get it gone, Let us show you ›

We Blog and Twitter all the time

Check out all of our blogs and our Twitter Pages

Papierblog ›
Thriftychick Shopping Blog ›
International Fashion Blog ›

Archives

Recent Comments

On

How to Pronounce Designer's Names

Balenciaga

The Wall Street Journal has an article that was long in coming for this fashion industry thing we love: how to pronounce designer’s names. The article gives phonetic spellings for each designer’s names. Some of the names are difficult to pronounce from an English speaker/reader’s perspective. A good chunk of the hard to pronounce names are Italian and French designers. Thing with fashion is that there are designers from Russia, Japan and other countries whose names are just as difficult if not moreso. So this primer is a godsend. If someone were to create an annual translation matrix I would buy it. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Jean Paul Gaultier (zhan paul GO-tee-AY), Alber Elbaz for Lanvin (al-BEAR el-BAHZ for lon-VAN), and Nicolas Ghesquière (NEE-ko-la guess-KYAIR).

Mamma mia! The Italian names can play tricks on you, too — such as Bulgari (BOOL-ga-ree), Ungaro (OON-ga-ro), Versace (ver-SAH-chay) and Zegna (ZANE-ya). And from Spain comes the tricky Loewe (LO-ee-VAY).

What they do that I am really happy about is clearing up the Ralph Lauren confusion. It’s pronounced just like the girl’s name…Lauren… for further clarification it rhymes with foreign. Not La-WREN. Read the full article here.

Eva

Related

No Comments

  1. [...] Q&A with model/actress/designer(/Starbucks barista?) Lou Doillon. » Papierblog is all about designer name pronunciation this week. We went over this already. Gucci: jew-chih. Chinese isn’t that hard to pronounce. [...]

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.