Responding to the possibilities offered by a global marketplace and Internet connections, Hispanic designers Carolina Herrera (Venezuela), Oscar de la Renta (Dominican Republic), together with Beth Sobol (United States) and Victoria Puig de Lange (Ecuador), formed the Council of Latin American Fashion Designers in 1999. An affiliated Fashion Week of the Americas established an international platform for Latin American fashion and culture. In newspapers, a new word surfaced in popular culture that combined fashion and the Spanish suffix -ista (implying, with a tinge of sarcasm, a devotee). The dress-conscious fashionista scoured the ever-expanding style pages of newspapers and e-zines for information about new talents like Narciso Rodríguez (United States), the famed designer of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy's bridal gown, and faced the proliferation of fashionable identities with gusto. In the urban centers of São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Bogotá, supermodels such as Gisele Bündchen (Brazil) and Valeria Mazza (Argentina) promoted national fashion events with international appeal. At the same time, free-trade agreements between countries, such as the Mercosur block of the Southern cone region, have enabled fashion designers to create transnational organizations, such as Identidades Latinas, to tap into new markets. Among others, the houses of Laurencio Adot (Argentina), Alexandre Herchcovitch (Brazil), Ronaldo Fraga (Brazil), Rubén Campos (Chile), Silvia Tcherassi (Colombia), Sitka Semsch (Peru), and Angel Sánchez (Venezuela) earned strong reputations in the category of women's wear. Lina Cantillo and Ricardo Pava (both of Colombia) seemed best known for their men's collections. Fraga and Sylma Cabrera (Puerto Rico) were noted in fashion circles for their attention to children's wear. Into the twenty-first century, the reputation of Latin American fashion designers continued to rise on the world fashion stage.
dress would inspire several fashions in Europe and the United States, from the blouse with lace ruffles inspired by the Afro-Cuban rumba, to the well-known Mexican huaraches, or woven leather sandals, to the straw Panama hat actually created in Ecuador. Vogue and Look turned attention to trendsetting Latin American women whose visions of haute couture, as in the case of Eva Perón (Argentina), and native designs, bringing to mind the surrealist painter Frida Kahlo (Mexico) who incorporated folkloric china poblana costume in bright colors and with a full skirt in her self-portraits and in real life, would continue to resonate in the popular imaginary until the present day. Other, more contemporary, fashion statements have tended to revisit the past for a retro effect, such as the young Cuban American donning the guayabera, a lightweight, embroidered cotton shirt worn untucked throughout the Caribbean; or the Chicano zoot-suiter, whose wartime appropriations of his father's suits inspired ethnic pride in the face of racism and brutality; or the teenage club kid wearing Inca-techno styles while discotheque dancing.
