Catalan chic

Tra­di­tion­ally, Sep­tem­ber kicks off the fash­ion year and all sec­tors of the in­dus­try look to the fu­ture with op­ti­mism. This year how­ever, two pieces of news have damp­ened fes­tiv­i­ties some­what.

The first re­lates to an un­ex­pected but long-hoped-for de­vel­op­ment that soon saw those hopes dashed. Event pro­moter Karl-Heinz Müller had an­nounced in July that the Bread & But­ter fes­ti­val would re­turn to Barcelona, much to the de­light of the fash­ion in­dus­try but also the city coun­cil and Barcelona's trade fair or­gan­is­ers. A quick about-face, how­ever, saw the or­gan­i­sa­tion state that: “Fash­ion in­dus­try and re­tail are scep­ti­cal to­wards an event in Barcelona in win­ter,“ be­fore going on to say that “Maybe a sum­mer event in Barcelona is more ad­vis­able.”

Yet, in­dus­try sources be­lieve this to be un­likely given the or­gan­i­sa­tion's ideas of ex­pan­sion into the lu­cra­tive Asian mar­kets, with Seoul on the menu for Sep­tem­ber 2015 and a pos­si­ble sec­ond Berlin fes­ti­val to take place in the Ger­man cap­i­tal in July of next year.

The sec­ond head­line speaks mainly to our long and es­tab­lished his­tory in the world of fash­ion and re­lates to the death of Cat­alo­nia's most in­ter­na­tion­ally renowned de­signer of his time, Manuel Pertegaz.

Of hum­ble ori­gen, Pertegaz left his na­tive Teruel in 1927 at the age of 10 and came to live in Barcelona. He ap­pren­ticed in a tai­lor's work­shop where he soon showed signs of his ex­cep­tional de­sign skills. By 1942, he had opened his own house of haute cou­ture on avin­guda Di­ag­o­nal, and that stu­dio re­mains to this day as it was dur­ing his life­time, a mir­ror of the el­e­gance of this de­signer and of an era.

Like most of his Cata­lan con­tem­po­raries, Pertegaz's entry into the in­ter­na­tional fash­ion scene began in Paris but he was quickly drawn to the US, where he had un­con­di­tional devo­tees, such as Ava Gard­ner and Au­drey Hep­burn. His cre­ations im­me­di­ately found their way into the major stores of Philadel­phia, New York, At­lanta and Boston and he was fêted by Har­vard Uni­ver­sity.

In­trin­sic to the world of fash­ion is the sense of con­stant change and it was this mo­men­tum which car­ried Pertegaz on an un­par­al­leled wave of suc­cess: an es­tab­lished fig­ure in the US, in­ter­na­tional ac­claim from shows in Amer­i­can cities, as well as Canada and Mex­ico, be­fore mov­ing back to the major cen­tres of Eu­rope and the East, and all in just three years.

When Cris­t­ian Dior died in 1957, Pertegaz was asked to take the reins of his em­pire. Sur­pris­ingly, he de­clined this most at­trac­tive offer, choos­ing in­stead to re­turn to Barcelona and it is for this that Cata­lan fash­ion is eter­nally grate­ful to him. The fact that de­sign­ers such as Pertegaz and Cristobél Ba­len­ci­aga were pre­pared to stake their claim in local ter­ri­tory bought a much needed re­spectabil­ity and le­git­i­macy to the work of other, lesser-known cre­atives. Thank­fully, it also bought the sig­nif­i­cant buy­ing power of Cata­lan high so­ci­ety back from Paris, pro­vid­ing a solid fi­nan­cial basis for de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion on home ground.

Cat­alo­nia had long boasted an es­tab­lished fash­ion in­dus­try, thanks to its close ties to the tex­tile in­dus­try and con­tin­u­ous con­tact with the world of the arts in the City of Light. Barcelona es­pe­cially thrived on its con­tact with the world be­yond our bor­ders, while at the same time wel­com­ing all and sundry to the city, cre­at­ing a lively and cos­mopoli­tan en­vi­ron­ment which fos­tered the growth of a mid­dle class anx­ious to pre­sent it­self in its finest at­tire to the world.

Spains' Civil War brought an abrupt end to the ro­man­ti­cism of the bur­geon­ing fash­ion world. Tex­tile fac­to­ries and work­shops ei­ther closed or went on a war foot­ing and those that sur­vived faced an en­tirely dif­fer­ent fu­ture in the years of the Franco dic­ta­tor­ship.

From the 1920s on­wards, fash­ion had be­come a con­sumer com­mod­ity and not solely the realm of the upper classes and the French con­cept of prêt-à-porter had gained in pop­u­lar­ity as well among a grow­ing mid­dle class. The af­ter­math of the con­flict how­ever, put paid to all that. The mid­dle classes that had steadily worked to im­prove their lot now found them­selves trapped both so­cially and eco­nom­i­cally, with lit­tle hope for change in their fore­see­able fu­ture.

Such con­cep­tual changes deeply ef­fect cre­ative in­dus­tries such as fash­ion and stretch be­yond the sim­ple busi­ness model of sup­ply and de­mand. It was not just the fact that peo­ple could no longer af­ford their prod­uct but more im­por­tantly that the en­vi­ron­ment which could nur­ture their cre­ativ­ity had sim­ply van­ished. Many cre­atives and de­sign­ers took up oc­cu­pa­tions which were able to fit com­fort­ably into the rigid­ity of the new regime: seam­stresses, tai­lors or pat­tern mak­ers. In Cat­alo­nia and Spain, cre­ativ­ity was ei­ther fos­tered for a se­lect few, or came under close scrutiny and gen­er­ated sus­pi­cion.

Of the major Cata­lan fash­ion houses that man­aged to stay afloat im­me­di­ately fol­low­ing the war, los Cinco Grandes, Asunción Bastida, Santa Eulàlia, El Dique Flotante, Pedro Ro­driguez and Manuel Pertegaz , all formed La Co­op­er­a­tiva de Alta Cos­tura, and see­ing lit­tle al­ter­na­tive, they set off to find fame and for­tune... in Madrid.

I would love to hear your views on this fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject. jhogan@​cat​alon​iato​day.​cat