Biography
Designer Bao Tranchi reigns supreme as the hottest new designer of spring 2004.
It took just 17 minutes for her to become the media darling of L.A. Fashion Week, Spring 2004.
Seventeen minutes of an imagined fairyland of aristocratic exiles sashaying down the runway, punctuated by the soaring compositions of the likes of Björk and Siouxsie and the Banshees, and a 40-outfit debut line that could make even the most ardent devotée of lady-like primness turn gothic royal for a day. Seventeen minutes to inspire glowing reviews by Women’s Wear Daily, and praise as “one of the most promising talents” by the Los Angeles Times and “breakout designer of the week … whose distressed-silk gothic fairy wear and rock ’n’ roll romanticism evinced a playfully sophisticated vision” by LA Weekly.
And when the former costume designer for the film Queen of the Damned stepped out onto the runway in that 17th minute to a standing ovation, dressed in a hand-distressed silk jersey dress barely clinging to her body in the most tenuous of web-like crochets, it all became clearer, this vision of Bao Tranchi. The designer is, one can say, the embodiment of her eponymous line.
