Carla V.
Carla van der Vorst dressed more Dutch hit artists and pop bands in the 1970s and 1980s including Shocking Blue, Golden Earring, Rainbow Train and the pretty girls of bubblegum pop groups like Luv, Babe and Dolly Dots. She also apprenticed Anouk and Candy Dulfer and countless other clients. International stars such as Diana Ross often discovered her designs through Carla van der Vorst's then-partner fashion photographer Claude Vanheye, who photographed and dressed all the big world stars in Carla V in his photography studio in the Jordaan district, or from contemporaries such as Fong Leng, Frank Govers, Kansai Yamamoto and Thierry Mugler.
Van der Vorst attended the fashion academy in Den Bosch for a while and then went to the Vrije Academie in The Hague. In the hippie 1960s, she processed patches of chamois leather into trendy patchwork jackets. Leather was her passion and always would be.
After a business in The Hague and Voorburg, a now-defunct Carla V shop opened on Amsterdam's Rokin in 1987. Until two years ago, she and partner Marian Janssen sold her designs in a shop on Cornelis Schuytstraat in Amsterdam. At the 2003 exhibition Mode op de planken, The Hague Municipal Museum exhibited some of Carla V's sexy and cool artist costumes.
