Everyone knows `Paul Ropp', the label-one of the most exuberant luxury brands of clothing to come out of Asia and strut the streets of Paris, New York, Rome, Rio, and anywhere else that appreciates beautiful women moving freely in handmade garments that are almost works of art.
But Paul Ropp, the man, insists that his clothes are not only for beautiful women with tiny hips and endlessly long legs - they are also for big men (like him) and anyone else who appreciates fine textiles with intensely handcrafted details in an array of colors that can send your heart to heaven.
The other day, Latitudes was invited to meet the maestro and visit the workshops in Kerobokan, the design district of northern Kuta, Bali, and we are still recovering from the impact of such a deluge of color and texture and ideas.
Let's start at the beginning, at the front door of the boutique. (We are at the boutique in Kerobokan now, but there are a number of Paul Ropp boutiques around the globe, and they are all designed by Paul Ropp to deliver the same signature environment.)
The experience begins with a whooosh: you pull open the glass doors and escape from the hot noisy Kuta street into a steely cool environment, whose colors are reminiscent of the stone quarries of Bali's volcanic river gorges. The furnishings are austere; the walls and floors are slate-gray. The lighting is pin-pointed-and it illuminates a treasure box of colors. In judiciously segregated niches, you see frothing forth gorgeous reverberations of blue-to green over here-and searing gold-to-orange-to-deep red and pink and purple over there. And over there again, there are quiet pools of earth tones and rich subtle grays.
You can't help moving close to these nests of color, to see what they're composed of. You find a fantasia of textiles in a variety of garments, running the gamut from long swooping skirts in layers of patch-work cotton and silk to little shield-like skirts embroidered with mirrors, beads, and Himalayan wool. And everywhere the most joyful colors: hot yellow; sporadic red; embroidery of tender purple and lavender; flashes of gold and silver thread.
Paul Ropp explains to us that it is the hand-worked complexity of the textiles that makes his clothes special. "We don't have to worry about people copying us. It's too hard. Who'd go to the trouble?"
These are limited edition clothes, made by many hundreds of people. Artisans in India hand-weave, dye, and embroider the cloth according to Paul Ropp's exacting instructions. At the studio in Kerobokan, the textiles are cut and assembled into prototypes.
"Everything's engineered," he says, taking us through the sunny warehouse, a vast treasury of stacks of astonishing textiles. "The artisans know exactly where to put the embroidery, where to put the songket weaving, where to put the beading. Look at the handwork on this." We peer closely at a little panel of silken crochet. The same textile is repeated in hot pink, orange, lime green, turquoise, deep blue.
"Incredible," we mumble, eyes spinning.
"It's basically Fire, Water, and Earth," Paul says. "Those are the color groups. With a little play in between. Look at these buttons." He shows us carved bone buttons on a flannel jacket. All the buttons are different. "They're the astrological signs," he says.
Suddenly it becomes clear. These are high-glamour fantasy clothes inspired by the 1960s.
"Yeah, I'm an old hippie from New York. I used to manufacture those cigarette papers printed with the American flag. Things got pretty hot for me in America in the late Sixties, so I left my business and went to India for ten years. Overnight I went from being a millionaire to wandering around India."
That's where he met all those artisans. When did he come to Bali? we ask.
"In 1971. I came to see friends and I stayed for eight years in their granny flat. I started making clothes and the business got so big that I couldn't stand it anymore. So I went fishing for four rears. I had a boat and a captain, and I wanted to change my head. Finally I came back and started doing this he makes a soft circle in the air that seems to encompass not only the clothes and the cloth and the boutique but also his wife and daughters and friends - "and I'm so happy."
He tells us, "This is a business model with a lot of human input. All this handwork is very precious, because it's going to disappear in another generation. See this blouse? It's going to be in a museum in ten years. I believe that South Asia and Southeast Asia can show the world another way of doing things. Our clothes are very labor-intensive and very modern. The brand is artisanal and it's hip. We're celebrating contrast, irony, duality. We make clothes for people who like to go naked-the least expensive clothes in the most expensive stores in the world. And :he company is made up of people from every major religion on earth, working together to make beautiful things.
What else could you ask for?"

Latitudes