Wearing a silky cream suit, cream pumps, and a matching hat, Rodica Carna could be a bride. Instead, she's on her way to school to teach German to rowdy 14-year-olds.
During the communist era, Romanian clothes were drab, unvaried and poorly made. The only fashion plate was Elena Ceausescu, hated wife of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who reportedly flew into a rage if anyone tried to upstage her.All that changed after 1989, when communism collapsed and the Ceausescus were executed. The explosion of glitzy clothes available since then has attracted fashion-conscious Romanians like moths to a flame.
The concept of "over-dressing" in public doesn't seem to exist. Romanian women think nothing of shelling out most of their pay for clothes, even in a country where the average monthly salary is barely the equivalent of $100.
"You get more respect if you dress well," Ms. Carna, 25, says, stopping on a downtown street where teenage girls are slinking past in shiny platform shoes and ankle-skimming, tight dresses.
Rodica Chebeleu looks as if she's stepped out of an opera, swathed in emerald green with a silk flower in her hair.
"Even if I go to the market I dress like this," says the fifty-something legal adviser. "I think people deserve to have something nice to look at."
At the hairdresser, accountant Mihaela Stan, 46, is sporting leather pumps that cost one-third her $200 monthly salary. "I am too poor to dress badly. Even in the kitchen I dress elegantly," she says.
The editor of the Romanian edition of Elle magazine, Cristina Verona thinks some Romanian women equate "glitter with richness and a certain rank in society." It is the result of communist thinking when modesty and utilitarian clothes were the norm, she says.
At a recent outdoor party put on by the U.S. Embassy, hundreds of guests ignored the "Dress: casual" advisory on the invitation, swanning around the American ambassador's lawn in suits and long gowns and high heels.
"Style is an antidote to vulnerability," said Janina Stefan, a fashion designer who arrived in a plunging satin evening gown and skyscraper heels.