Talent, creativity, art and courage

In times of cri­sis it is un­com­mon for any ven­ture to grow ex­po­nen­tially in its early days. When it does, it at­tracts at­ten­tion and in­ter­est. A team of what they them­selves might term “hob­by­ists”, led by fash­ion de­signer Clara Es­teve, have done just that in the coastal town of Ca­longe in a mere three years, with a dar­ing ven­ture that has sur­prised all and sundry. The fig­ures speak for them­selves: daily at­ten­dance at the Costa Brava Fash­ion Week­end in the first year was 2,500 and last year it was 5,000. This year it grew to 12,000 peo­ple.

Things cer­tainly seem to have evolved very quickly. Where did all this come from?

It started out as some­thing of a hobby. I came up with the basic idea. I have been in fash­ion de­sign for 15 years, 12 of those de­sign­ing for a label and the last three work­ing alone here in Ca­longe, and I got to­gether with a group of friends, all pro­fes­sion­als in the fields of pho­tog­ra­phy, media, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, things in gen­eral re­lated to the image. We put to­gether a pro­ject, based lo­cally, we came up with the name and the idea of host­ing the event here. Next we took the idea to the town coun­cil and they were in­ter­ested. I think they were sur­prised that we had most of it sorted out al­ready. We al­ready knew the place we wanted, El Col­let, a very spe­cial venue, and they said yes.

And how did the first year go? Were you happy with it?

We con­tacted peo­ple, de­sign­ers, all sorts of peo­ple. The bud­get was al­most non-ex­is­tent; we were and are all vol­un­teers, it's not a com­pany or any­thing like that. It was all very pre­car­i­ous and we were so ner­vous. Our sur­prise was the enor­mous re­sponse. We al­most couldn't cope, we had the feel­ing we were los­ing con­trol. But the pub­lic loved it, the whole event, the cat­walks, the stalls, every­thing.

This group of or­gan­is­ers, how many of you are there?

In that first year just four, but now there are 10 of us. Of course, we in­cor­po­rate other peo­ple as we get nearer to the event it­self or as we need them and then there is the staff for the week­end it­self. But re­mem­ber, this is all non-profit and that means work­ing for the love of it.

So, the how did things evolve from there?

The sec­ond year we tried a num­ber of things, some worked, some didn't. For ex­am­ple, the mar­ket place. In the first year we had 18 stalls and then, 32. Too many. We learned a lot and it helped us make good de­ci­sions, es­pe­cially for this year when we de­cided to con­cen­trate on qual­ity, de­liv­ery, con­tent, and not so much on the quan­tity. We have learned that we have lim­its and we are com­fort­able with that be­cause we want to main­tain stan­dards. That sec­ond year a lot of good things hap­pened; pri­vate spon­sor­ship and back­ing from pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tions. The coun­cil saw the pos­si­bil­i­ties and de­vel­oped the venue, which has been great for the town in gen­eral. But the best thing was that, de­spite the ups and downs, the pub­lic re­sponse was tremen­dous. But re­ally, we tried to grow too quickly and we had to stop and re­think things. There are fewer stalls. We have de­cided that we will not change the pro­gramme in terms of the num­ber of cat­walks and we will keep the event to the three days. Our real ob­jec­tive is to get be­hind de­sign­ers, pro­mote cre­ators, sup­port local cre­ators...

By local you mean...

Local in­dus­try here in Cat­alo­nia and in Spain. We are very clear about one thing, all those tak­ing part are based here, de­sign here, buy their fab­rics here, pro­duce their col­lec­tions here. We live in an area, the Em­pordà in Cat­alo­nia, and we want to sup­port that. It is a ques­tion of set­ting an iden­tity and we want to sup­port fash­ion and de­sign that is linked to where we live, de­sign­ers and pro­duc­ers who have made a de­ci­sion to base them­selves here. We don't want to leave any­one out, and as there are a lot of de­sign­ers want­ing to at­tend, we have to choose and we are care­ful about that. Our role is to sup­port those who take to the cat­walk. They are here to sell them­selves and mar­ket their de­signs. Our job is to make sure they are able to do so in the best pos­si­ble con­di­tions.

Where is all of this going?

(Laugh­ter) The truth is that at the be­gin­ning we saw this as a five-year pro­ject. In re­al­ity, it is a year by year thing. It is so com­plex, any­thing else is im­pos­si­ble. For a start off, we are still work­ing with a tiny bud­get, so think­ing so far ahead is out of the ques­tion. We close one event and al­most im­me­di­ately we are work­ing on the next. We don't have a choice. If we want pri­vate spon­sors then they we have to have that or­gan­ised be­fore the end of their fi­nan­cial year. The other thing is that we re­ally do not know what will hap­pen in the fu­ture. There have been some changes in the team and there will be oth­ers in the fu­ture. We are all pro­fes­sion­als and work­ing in our own jobs that pay the rent. This doesn't. It's not al­ways pos­si­ble for every­one to ded­i­cate their time in the same way. Luck­ily, when some­one leaves there is al­ways some­one else ready to step in. Changes? There have been many. We have signed an agree­ment with Barcelona 080, we have other of­fi­cial pa­trons and en­dorse­ments. We have de­vel­oped the fringe areas of the event: music, art, en­ter­tain­ment. This year we de­cided to have the first prize awarded among the de­sign­ers.

What about recog­ni­tion out­side the area?

080 is con­sol­i­da­tion, recog­ni­tion, it shows every­one that we are mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion. We have good press, lo­cally and na­tion­ally, peo­ple are show­ing an in­ter­est . Also, to pre­sent the event we are on the move. The first year we held the pre­sen­ta­tion here, then in Girona, and this year in Barcelona. That also has helped us with spon­sor­ship. This year we have been spon­sored by the brew­ery Moritz.

Is CBFW like other events, the fash­ion mar­kets in other places, in larger cen­tres?

No, we have de­vel­oped our own per­son­al­ity and we are not try­ing to im­i­tate or to be what we are not. That unique iden­tity is im­por­tant to us be­cause it keeps us cen­tred on what we are doing.

What makes a cat­walk in a fash­ion event so spe­cial?

As a de­signer my­self I can say it is that mo­ment when you pre­sent all of your work of the last six or eight months, it is so spe­cial: my work, out in the open and ready to be judged by every­one, for good or for bad. It's like a small birth in some ways. I think other de­sign­ers feel the same. Things change but the cat­walk has been around for a long time. But think about this, right now I am work­ing on next year's col­lec­tion. A year in the fu­ture. Re­ally, the idea is fright­en­ing. Quite hon­estly at times I think I am going mad. Colours, fab­ric, style, tex­tures, all for some­thing that is not going to hap­pen for a year. The in­ter­net and fast fash­ion have also changed things. The mo­ment you put your work on the cat­walk you know some­one is film­ing and quite pos­si­bly, some­where, in just a few hours, some­one is al­ready copy­ing your de­sign and it will be in the shops be­fore you can get it there your­self. All the work you have been doing over the last six months.

All of this is pretty heady, it seems non-stop. Main­tain­ing that en­thu­si­asm and mo­ti­va­tion in the team all year round, is that dif­fi­cult?

Yes, it is. But every­one is mo­ti­vated and no one has stopped be­liev­ing in the pro­ject. But we also have to think of main­tain­ing con­tact with the pub­lic. We are lucky to have an ex­cel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tions team that works all year around. Being in a state of con­stant evo­lu­tion helps and that every­one feels part of the pro­ject is also im­por­tant.

And this per­son­al­ity? Give me words.

Ad­jec­tives? You are ask­ing me to de­fine the CBFW? Let me think. Tal­ent, cre­ation, cre­ativ­ity, art, fash­ion, de­mand­ing, per­haps we could say some­what ob­ses­sive and per­fec­tion­ist, dy­namic, and very coura­geous.