Spanish author fashion has a plan to succeed in the world

The parade in Paris of the Cordoban designer Juana Martín during Haute Couture Week, on July 7, was the reissue of an old dream: Spanish fashion to conquer the world.

Her achievement is quite a rarity – she was invited by the demanding federation that coordinates this programming, one of the most elite in the world, and she did it in the official section together with firms such as Dior, Chanel or Schiaparelli – and has been celebrated as such.

In the history of Spanish fashion there are Cristóbal Balenciaga, Paco Rabanne and Sybilla, but also a prolonged effort —not always fruitful— to raise the voice of its creators beyond the Pyrenees.

This is how the historian Miquel Martínez Albero relates it in the catalog of the recent exhibition

.

A history of fashion (1940-1970): the Spanish Fashion Festivals of 1952 and 1960, the Spanish Haute Couture platform or the participation of Manuel Pertegaz and Elio Berhanyer in the New York International Exhibition of 1964 already aspired to internationalization .

Seven decades later, and with notable exceptions and moments of media brilliance, the existential dilemma of Spanish designer fashion persists, that territory dominated by small firms that complement, in prices and artistic ambition, what the rest of the planet understands by fashion. Spanish today: business giants such as Inditex, Mango or Tendam.

Last May, the Madrid Costume Museum hosted a series of talks and round tables to present a new organization, the Spanish Fashion Academy Foundation, which aspires to tackle some pending issues: training, advice and, above all, visibility.

“We have been thinking for some time about the importance of valuing these types of companies that cannot economically compete with the large textile companies, but that are highly relevant”, explains Pepa Bueno,

executive director of the Fashion Creators Association of Spain and vice president of this new entity.

"Author fashion firms create country identity and are a very powerful communication tool," she says.

The model Claudia Schiffer in a fashion show by the designers Victorio and Lucchino at the Cibeles Catwalk in February 1993.ÓSCAR MORENO (EFE)

Alejandra Caro, marketing director at Harrods and luxury expert, agrees with her: “The biggest disadvantage is that we are not organized to support these brands.

We must reflect on the cultural value that fashion brings to Spain, but also on the economic value that the creation of a Spain Brand implies through products and values”, she added.

“The real problem in Spanish fashion is the lack of visibility, not of value, quality or creative talent.

It has not been made known because there is no common positioning exercise or articulation of what Spanish fashion is at an international level”.

In Europe, the models are clear: France, for its investment in luxury and crafts firms;

United Kingdom, for its promotion of emerging talent, and Italy, for its way of uniting industry and design.

The latter is especially urgent in Spain, whose fashion continues to suffer the consequences of the dismantling of the textile industry during the late Franco regime and the Transition.

“That has already been done, but now we have to see what is recovered and how it is recovered,” recalls Bueno.

Design of the spring-summer 2022 collection of Palomo SpainFede Delibes (Palomo Spain)

In Italy, whose textile power comes from an industry driven by design, there are recent examples that can be used, as explained by Carlo Capasa, president of the Camera della Moda Italiana, who mentions the success stories of Puglia and Sicily, far of the manufacturing strength of Lombardy or Tuscany.

“They were not very industrial areas, they hardly had traditions of artisan embroidery and affordable shoe making, but some entrepreneurs began to invest in small companies specialized in a single type of product, such as embroidery, slippers or tailoring,” explains Capasa.

“Today they make up important nuclei, and that is something that can also happen in Spain.

It is not easy and it is not achieved overnight, but the fundamental thing is to start from something, even if it is a very small craft tradition,

Craftsmanship is precisely one of the key points in the program of this new foundation, which plans to create a school of trades.

They are not alone in it;

of the most visible initiatives that have emerged in recent years in Spanish fashion, several are associated with the reactivation of craft circuits: from the workshops that produce the Palomo Spain collections in Posadas (in the province of Córdoba) to the collaboration of Moisés Nieto with the blanket factories of Ezcaray (La Rioja), the association of artisan embroiderers founded by Leandro Cano in Ventas de Carrizal (Jaén), his home town, or the vindication of Spanish wool carried out by Oteyza in collections such as the presented last June at the residence of the Spanish ambassador in Paris.

Even the parade in Seville of Dior's cruise collection has put the focus on the textile traditions linked to the liturgical pomp in the Andalusian capital.

It is not a new fascination.

The founders of Victorio & Lucchino, a stellar name in Spanish fashion of the eighties and nineties, have just opened a museum in the Sevillian town of Palma del Río dedicated to celebrating the legacy of a firm that in its moments of glory rose to the Madrid catwalk to Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell.

That, it should be remembered, was much more than a mirage.

They have just inaugurated in the Sevillian town of Palma del Río a museum dedicated to celebrating the legacy of a firm that in its moments of glory brought Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell to the Madrid catwalk.

That, it should be remembered, was much more than a mirage.

They have just inaugurated in the Sevillian town of Palma del Río a museum dedicated to celebrating the legacy of a firm that in its moments of glory brought Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell to the Madrid catwalk.

That, it should be remembered, was much more than a mirage.

The model Naomi Campbell dressed as a wedding by Victorio and Lucchino at the Cibeles Catwalk in September 1993. ÁNGEL DÍAZ (EFE)

What can be done, therefore, to help new talent?

Pascal Morand, president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, the entity that coordinates fashion strategy in France, gives several clues: a showroom for emerging creators, collaborations with trade fairs and, at certain times, the possibility of enter the official calendars through a system "that reminds the academic", with presentation of dossiers, assessment by a committee of experts that changes every year, screening, acceptance and fit into the calendar.

"It's somewhat bureaucratic, but without secrets," explains Morand.

“Before it was more subjective, but we have made an effort to give it objectivity.”

The case of the United Kingdom is somewhat different: its potential lies not so much in the importance of its companies as in the talent of the designers trained in its prestigious schools.

The journalist Sarah Mower, who has been collaborating with the British Fashion Council for years, proposes a more realistic horizon.

"It worked for us to organize a sample of British designers in Paris during the shows," she says.

She also suggests resizing expectations in an industry where the parade shouldn't be the end of the process, but rather the starting point.

“After five years of experience, problems arise, and many designers make a living through collaborations,” she explains.

“You have to look for other sources of income.

Investors and banks often think only of the possibilities of growth at scale,

but that doesn't have to be the most appropriate question.

The reality is that the fashion industry is declining.

Gone are the days when being a designer meant having a yacht and five houses.

Fashion will never be that again.

It is more sensible to think of small businesses that are well managed in a sustainable way”, concludes Mower.

From this perspective, perhaps the unfinished business of Spanish fashion, more than astronomical growth, is to reevaluate itself, take advantage of its possibilities and redefine its dreams without taking its feet off the ground.

Oteyza Spring-Summer 2023 collection show at Paris Men's Fashion Week.Benjamin Cremel (Oteyza)