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Juan Duyos, designer: "One day I assumed that I was not going to be Gucci or Rodarte, and that, furthermore, I did not want to be"

2022-12-27T05:16:13.759Z


The designer is celebrating a quarter of a century of career surrounded by some of his muses and feeling that he has finally found his place in Spanish fashion. “Peace comes when you calm down and understand who you are and what you know how to do,” he says.


Even when fashion did not enter his plans, Juan Duyos (Madrid, 54 years old) had certain intuitions about his future.

“For example, he knew that he was not going to do the military.

And I also visualized myself working in a nice place, a bright apartment with wooden floors, with the people I love”.

The studio where Duyos has his brand, a few meters from Madrid's Gran Vía, therefore has the clarity of dreams come true: high ceilings, generous windows and, during the session for this report, a selection of travel companions to those for whom the term “muse” falls short: the model Nieves Álvarez, the public relations Blanca Zurita, the artist Brianda Fitz-James;

Vanessa Manzano, his right hand for decades, and the choreographer Mar Aguiló,

Duyos says that his greatest pride lies in never having considered throwing in the towel, despite belonging to an ecosystem, that of Spanish author fashion, to which an iron bad health is attributed that persists despite prejudices.

"It's just that I don't know how to do anything else," he reflects.

"It has taken me a lot to get here, have the team I like and be with the people I love, so I imagine there has never been a plan B."

Manzano corroborates this: “Juan is the most resilient and stubborn man I know.

When he wants something, he focuses on it."

Duyos, with his right hand, Vanessa Manzano, who is wearing a dress from the Luz collection, from spring-summer 2019, and jewelry by Salazar & Bermúdez.Fede Delibes

And what the Duyos of 25 years ago wanted was to give outlet to a creativity that had not found accommodation in the Fine Arts studios, his first option.

He was running in the mid-nineties and did a tandem with his always friend, Cecilia Paniagua, with whom he shared school, ideas and circumstances.

She worked with Sybilla and he with Manuel Piña: two nocturnal puppies in the heart of the Spanish avant-garde.

“We didn't know where we were going, because we were working with the best, with two well-established creators, and we thought that making fashion would be something similar to what they did.

But nothing to see.

We were very excited, but it is difficult to survive in a country where there is little support for fashion and where they are comparing you all the time with the outside”.

His first steps reflect the indie and disruptive euphoria of his generation.

“I remember those first collections as something very wild, we were club kids, we went out all the time and did the shows with our friends”.

His first show was an exercise in self-taught optimism.

“We timed the passage of the models in the hallway at home and we took hairdresser friends with us without knowing that there were already hairdressers there for the fashion shows”.

Colorful images remain from those first collections, a set of colorful and iconoclastic garments.

“In fashion you always need a phenomenon, and we were one in 1997. We started doing press and selling in stores all over Spain.

The media were on top of it, they put our dresses in

Vogue

for Penélope Cruz and we were freaking out because all that had no return.

We made the collections with the money that our families lent us, or we went to the Rastro and found a roll of printed fabric by Elio Berhanyer from the seventies and we made the dresses that we could”.

Nieves Álvarez, with a dress from the spring-summer 2023 collection, a Bulgari bracelet and earrings from Salazar & Bermúdez.Fede Delibes

Finally, reality set in.

In 1999 Paniagua left the project — he threw himself into the development of Sybilla's Jocomomola line before passing away prematurely in 2001 — and Duyos became just Duyos.

“I decided to continue on my own, with such good fortune that they gave me the L'Oréal Award.

And we began to sell well, although it was fatal to do everything”.

That first impulse lasted until 2006, when the industry changed from top to bottom with the irruption of the large affordable fashion chains.

“We sold in the best stores in each place, but one day that business model crashed, just like the record companies or the airlines.

And we decided to do what we knew how to do well, which was custom sewing and fashion”.

This approach, less in the media, but more calm, transformed his way of seeing the job.

"For me,

That change fundamentally meant peace.

I assumed that it wasn't going to be Gucci or Rodarte, and that, besides, I didn't want to be.

And it worked.

We started billing what we knew we could bill, without comparing ourselves to the big luxury brands, because the big mistake we've made has been not knowing how to locate ourselves.

Peace comes when you calm down and understand what you are and what you know how to do.

Brianda Fitz-James, with a look from the Duyos 99 collection, Camper boots and a Salazar & Bermúdez ring. Fede Delibes

The change in business surprised him by becoming a creator with his own language that he gradually sifted through, he assures, as he learned to listen to his environment and, above all, to his clients.

“I was never a child who dressed dolls.

I had no vocation as such.

But at first everything was much more creative, he did what he wanted and asked little, not even the women around me.

He assures that over time he learned to listen and conceive of his work in a less Saturnian and more empathetic way.

“I have learned a lot from women.

Now my daily life is the six women who work with me and the clients”.

One key, he explains, is to always attend to them in person during tests.

“The 20-year-old clients come to make their wedding dress with their mother and grandmother, and I listen to them and try to make them all as beautiful as possible.

And it's wonderful because they come to the workshop to enjoy, like when you go to a restaurant to eat well.

And I'm good at that deal, so I'm lucky."

Blanca Zurita, with a design by Duyos from the Fan collection, spring-summer 2006, and jewelry by Salazar & Bermúdez.Fede Delibes

Daily life, however, does not prevent dreams from breaking in from time to time.

Her 25th anniversary collection is an ode to the colours, patterns and aesthetic exuberance she discovered on a recent trip to Estonia, staged by an ensemble of professional dancers.

"It's a very scenic collection, it's not just clothes," explains Mar Aguiló, who tells that the design of the collection and that of the choreography followed parallel paths in search of the perfect movement.

Nieves Álvarez, who has worn her clothes on numerous occasions, agrees with this assessment.

“He pays a lot of attention to the fabrics and has a very pure elegance, which underlines the movement of the clothes.

Her parades always bring something else ”.

Despite being a new collection,

On the catwalk, the dancers danced to the rhythm of a soundtrack that is the only nod to Duyos: Portishead and Massive Attack, he explains, "the music I listened to 25 years ago."

A time in which he still could not imagine that fashion would take him down a thousand different paths without ever letting go of his hand.

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Source: elparis

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