AMSALE ABERRA

Amsale Aberra's career as a couture bridal and eveningwear designer happened by necessity. While planning her 1985 nuptials to film executive Neil Brown, Amsale scoured the stores to find a simple, refined wedding dress. She found little in the way of clean, sophisticated gowns, and discovered an untapped niche in the bridal market—elegant and understated dresses.

"Everything was so overdone and with too much ornamentation," says Amsale, who was sure that her taste in gowns was shared by many other brides-to-be. Amsale placed a classified advertisement for custom-made gowns for other brides-to-be who shared her taste in sophisticated, understated designs. And so, with a few responses, a sketchpad full of designs, and a small team of couture sewers, Amsale started her business out of her New York City loft apartment.

Since then, the name AMSALE (pronounced Ahm-sah'-leh) has become synonymous with the "forever modern" wedding dress. Her collections are designed for brides who desire a fashionable, sophisticated and timeless look. Amsale believes: "Twenty years after the wedding, I want a bride to be able to look at her pictures and be as happy with the way she looked as she was on her wedding day."

“In Ethiopia there were no fashion designers. I never knew that designing beautiful clothes was a profession to which one could aspire.”
Amsale Aberra

Amsale’s love of fashion began as a young girl growing up in Ethiopia. However, Amsale never considered becoming a designer: “In Ethiopia there were no fashion designers. I never knew that designing beautiful clothes was a profession to which one could aspire.”

Amsale convinced her parents to allow her to leave Ethiopia in order to study commercial art in New England. While in school a revolution broke out in her native country, which forced Amsale to stay in the United States to support herself and complete her undergraduate education at University of Massachusetts – Boston through a number of odd-jobs. With limited financial resources, Amsale admits “I would design and sew my own clothes because I couldn’t afford to buy new things. That’s when I first thought of becoming a fashion designer.”

Amsale left Boston, enrolled in New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and began her career as a design assistant for Harve Bernard upon graduation. Two years later, Amsale launched her custom bridal-gown business.

Amsale's love of fashion began as a young girl growing up in Ethiopia. However, Amsale never considered becoming a designer: "In Ethiopia there were no fashion designers. I never knew that designing beautiful clothes was a profession to which one could aspire."

Amsale convinced her parents to allow her to leave Ethiopia in order to study commercial art in New England. While in school a revolution broke out in her native country, which forced Amsale to stay in the United States to support herself and complete her undergraduate education at University of Massachusetts - Boston through a number of odd-jobs. With limited financial resources, Amsale admits "I would design and sew my own clothes because I couldn't afford to buy new things. That's when I first thought of becoming a fashion designer."

Amsale left Boston, enrolled in New York's Fashion Institute of Technology and began her career as a design assistant for Harve Bernard upon graduation. Two years later, Amsale launched her custom bridal-gown business with her "forever modern" approach to sophisticated design.

Amsale's design philosophy has redefined the perception of the timeless wedding gown. Her innovative twists to time honored hallmarks of the traditional wedding gown—reintroducing "illusion design," modern updates of the traditional bustle, and tasteful color accents including the now-famous "blue sash" gown—have become so popular among prospective brides that they have been recognized as modern classics.

Amsale Aberra

She extends that viewpoint of individuality to her collection of chic and refined gowns for the bridal party, and in the Amsale Evening collection of couture evening wear—both lines a natural progression from the sophisticated and modern styles of her bridal collection. Amsale's ball gowns, cocktail dresses and evening suits have been featured on the fashion and party pages of all the top fashion magazines, and worn by celebrities and socialites including Halle Berry, Julia Roberts, Selma Blair, Salma Hayek, Lucy Liu, Heather Graham, Kim Basinger, Deborah Norville, Vivica A. Fox, Vanessa Williams, Lisa Kudrow, Heidi Klum, Katherine Heigl and many others. Producers turn to Amsale when they need beautiful designs for films and television programs; her gowns have been featured on "The Oprah Winfrey Show", "Grey's Anatomy" and "27 Dresses."

Amsale's Madison Avenue boutique, which opened in September 2001, has fulfilled Amsale's desire to present her designs in a setting that reflected her "forever modern" vision. The 5,000 square foot boutique is an urban space with a gallery-like atmosphere that provides a sleek, sophisticated canvas and the perfect backdrop for Amsale's elegant designs. The boutique offers a full range of designs from all of the brands within the Amsale Design Group, including Amsale, Amsale Bridesmaids, Christos and Kenneth Pool. The Kenneth Pool line is designed by Project Runway alum, Austin Scarlett, while Amsale Aberra is the Creative Director for the Amsale and Christos lines.

Amsale Aberra

TEXT SOURCES AND MORE INFORMATION

AMSALE OFFICIAL WEBSITE

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is from Abba, in Anambra State, but grew up in the university town of Nsukka where she attended primary and secondary schools and briefly studied Medicine and Pharmacy. She then moved to the United States to attend college, graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State with a major in Communication and a minor in Political Science. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a Masters degree in African Studies from Yale.

She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and she has recently published a collection of short stories titled The Thing around Your Neck (2009). She has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007) and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2008).

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Purple Hibiscus won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was also short-listed for the Orange Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and long-listed for the Booker Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, Prospect, and The Iowa Review among other literary journals, and she received an O. Henry Prize in 2003. She was a 2005-2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton, where she taught Introductory Fiction. She divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Half of a Yellow Sun takes place in Nigeria during the Nigerian-Biafran War in 1967-1970. The effect of the war is shown through the dynamic relationships of five people’s lives ranging from high ranking political figures, a professor, a British citizen, and a houseboy. After the British left Nigeria and stopped ruling, conflicts arose over what government would rule over the land. The land split and the Nigeria-Biafra war started. The lives of the main characters (two sisters Olanna and Kainene) drastically changed and were torn apart by the war and decisions in their personal life.

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story at TED Talks

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

"And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story." "The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar."

"Of course, Africa is a continent full of catastrophes. There are immense ones, such as the horrific rapes in Congo. And depressing ones, such as the fact that 5,000 people apply for one job vacancy in Nigeria. But there are other stories that are not about catastrophe. And it is very important, it is just as important, to talk about them."

TEXT SOURCES AND FOR MORE INFORMATION
http://www.halfofayellowsun.com/

http://www.l3.ulg.ac.be/adichie/index.html

http://www.ted.com chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html