Amid the eclectic offerings and unabashed direction, designers’ visions mostly fizzled. Still, their gestures of creativity continue apace.
BARCELONA, SPAIN — Some ideas hover in the creative ether in a given season, getting twisted and tweaked by designers across the board. Safe to say, the creative minds at 080 Barcelona Fashion Week fall into this latter category.
In seasons past, Spanish designers have shown a hodgepodge of offerings that refuse to make a display of traditionalism—they’ve shown menswear replete with feminine staples that often felt scarcely like menswear at all. Forget about all manner of conventions or direction: that’s just a surmise, of course, but it’s another way to understand the connotation of the Spanish designers’ work in our own disruptive age.
In general, this season has been about stripping away material effects and focusing on a sense of carefree ease through the means of textile experimentation, which these clothes do aplenty. I love it when fashion has the fearlessness to spark a big shift, which refuses to let itself be defined by codes or protocols.
But designers at 080 Barcelona Fashion Week consistently injected a sense of humour and joy into the formality and severe tailoring; they weren’t static looks as most smaller-scale fashion weeks do. They showed clothes with outlandish accessories, including va-va-voom bags, ivory mules with spike heels, and quirky volumes that spoofed the minds of local aficionados. So, what about the much sought-after quiet luxury movement? Well, goodbye to all of that.
404 Studio
404 Studio
“We do a lot of crochet, and everything is handmade,” explained 404 Studio’s Anaïs Vauxcelles backstage, ahead of her show. “We’re inspired by the collection Hackers of 1995, starring Angelina Jolie: in the film, there are three kids fighting the system because a company tries to do something really bad, and they’re hacking everything to get to the point where everything settles.” This was the brand’s leitmotif, now seven years into her business.
“As an emerging and independent brand, it’s really hard to navigate these days because everyone is so massive and no one wonders how one can push against the grain,” she answers. “So for me, this collection is a statement”. The label predominantly sells abroad, with the first show being held in Silencio, Paris, and its products keep pushing internationally.
404 Studio
“We just dressed Lisa from BLACKPINK for the MTV Europe Music Awards and also Jisoo from BLACKPINK was wearing one of our looks,” she says. This season was Vauxcelles’s avenue to express how she’s not happy with the system and how she feels about the need to fight it. “It’s almost like a gentle rebellion: a way to show that a super small brand can make really cool clothes while being relevant.”
Ernesto Naranjo, on the contrary, leaned on gestures of the past to shape his vision for the present. “Everything began with the Ziegfeld Girls, one of those musicals from the 1940s Hollywood: they were big movies with tons of shimmers and show-driven spectacles, so it’s like the construction of that kind of beauty,” offered the designer.
Ernesto Naranjo
Ernesto Naranjo
Ernesto Naranjo
“We also used as an inspiration Lynda Benglis and Leonora Carrington as the main characters, also for their ironic and surrealistic touch: the final looks, like the ones with tulle and the layering of tulle in different colours, are really important for me because they actually represent the way a painter creates,” he opines. “When everything drapes around the body of the girl, that makes it look good.”
On the commercial side, he speaks frankly about the complexities of the system. “I mean, it’s going and that’s the most important thing,” he says. “We’re still here, and at the end of the day the industry is really tough, but I think we’re trying to find our voice and also our formula of success.”
Ernesto Naranjo
Ernesto Naranjo
From a strategic perspective, the brand’s retail and wholesale strategies have changed over the years, implementing a B2B approach in marketing. “We did wholesale before, and it’s really a mess and difficult for a young designer,” he admits. “We don’t really get money from that, so I decided to do my own sales through e-commerce; in that way, everything’s really slow and niche.”
Compete Spain
Compete Spain
Compete Spain
Weaving further threads of creative purpose is Compte Spain’s Santi Mozas, whose latest outing points to found objects and high-octane glamour. “With this show we talk about objects, which is why it’s called Objet Trové,” he opined.
“Like all the fables, while creating this lineup we kept in mind an object like the apple of Snow White or the glass high hill of Cinderella. So there’s a connection between objects and magic, the good and the bad.” The brand’s sales mainly pivot in countries like Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and America. “In Spain, we make gowns for weddings and bridal, and I do all the things made to order.”
Overall, the collections’ reliance on whimsy threatened to stifle cohesion and direction—here, fun might indeed be the best resistance.
by Chidozie Obasi