080, license to thrill

We are in Barcelona's mar­itime mu­seum, the mag­nif­i­cently re­stored Dras­sanes Reials or Royal ship­yards. It is an enor­mous and im­pres­sive build­ing and its past is in­ter­wo­ven with the his­tory of Cat­alo­nia. Right now, this im­mense space is filled with ex­pec­ta­tion as some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing, some­thing thrilling, is about to begin. This year, the or­gan­is­ers of 080 Barcelona Fash­ion, have cho­sen this set­ting to proudly pre­sent a whole in­dus­try to the world. They could not have cho­sen a bet­ter and more apt venue.

Cat­alo­nia's ven­tures into the world of com­merce out­side its bor­ders go far back and, in­deed, few re­alise the im­por­tance of the role of this small coun­try in the his­tory and de­vel­op­ment of trade. What we know today as Cham­bers of Com­merce began in cities such as Barcelona, Mar­seilles and Gen­ova in the 13th cen­tury. In 1258, the Char­ter of the Coast of Barcelona es­tab­lished what would be­come the Con­sulates of the Sea, spread around the Mediter­ranean, which reg­u­lated and pro­tected com­merce and per­mit­ted the prac­tice of fair trade and led to the cre­ation of in­dus­try and wealth. It opened Cat­alo­nia to the world, and even the events of 1714 could not turn back the clock. The coun­try's first au­tonomous in­sti­tu­tion fol­low­ing the end of the War of Suc­ces­sion was in 1758 with the es­tab­lish­ment of the As­sem­bly of Com­merce, which had far-reach­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive pow­ers.

So, here we sit and what we are about to wit­ness bears a di­rect re­la­tion­ship to this past. From this grew the tex­tile in­dus­try which shaped the face of mod­ern Cat­alo­nia as a po­lit­i­cal, so­cial and cul­tural en­tity. The tex­tile and an­cil­lary in­dus­tries gave us the nou­cen­tista move­ment, the ex­pan­sion of the arts, ar­chi­tec­ture, in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and the coun­try de­vel­oped a wealthy mid­dle class which, as we saw in our first ar­ti­cle in Cata­lan Chic , cre­ated new de­mands and led to the de­vel­op­ment of a mod­ern fash­ion in­dus­try.

Since the mid-19th cen­tury, fash­ion out­lets and sa­lons of­fered pri­vate show­ings for in­di­vid­ual clients and this prac­tice was taken into the new-fan­gled de­part­ment stores that em­ployed mod­els who would be called on at any time to walk for clients. In Cat­alo­nia, fash­ion pa­rades were part and par­cel of the Uni­ver­sal Ex­hi­bi­tion in 1929 but Santa Eulàlia and oth­ers had been putting on shows be­fore this. But like Lon­don Fash­ion Week, or that of the Big Apple, some­thing like 080 is dif­fer­ent; it is an “event”, and a fash­ion event is some­thing that has cre­ated its own de­f­i­n­i­tion. This is some­thing that we can doc­u­ment and date. New York, 1914, and we even have a name: Edna Wood­man Chase. The show was called “Fash­ion Fete” and was a se­ries of pa­rades over a few days dis­play­ing the work of dif­fer­ent de­sign­ers. It was an im­me­di­ate suc­cess. Per­haps too suc­cess­ful, even for its founder, who went on to be­come ed­i­tor of Vogue, so much so that in 1954 she wrote: ”Now that fash­ion shows have be­come a way of life … a lady is hard put to it to lunch, or sip a cock­tail, in any smart hotel or store front from New York to Dal­las to San Fran­cisco with­out hav­ing lis­some young things … sway­ing down a run­way six inches above her nose.”

Post-war Cat­alo­nia saw the be­gin­nings of fash­ion events with the Co­op­er­a­tiva de Alta Cos­tura and this even took our fash­ion on tour through­out the US and Eu­rope. It was highly suc­cess­ful, if not some­what ex­clu­sive. Fol­low­ing Franco's death, the new de­mo­c­ra­tic fer­vour took fash­ion on to the streets and there was a joy­ful and pro­duc­tive an­ar­chy. Part of the in­dus­try saw the need to put the house in order, and the an­swer was the Saló Gaudí.

Per­haps it was the wrong mo­ment, per­haps it was the cri­sis in the tex­tile in­dus­try, per­haps it was try­ing to do too much, or per­haps, as one of the de­sign­ers in­volved said, “We spent too much time think­ing about what they were doing else­where and not think­ing about what we were or weren't doing here.” What­ever it was, there was some­thing miss­ing and de­sign­ers looked else­where and Gaudí could not find its foot­ing on the in­ter­na­tional cat­walk.

Enter 080 Barcelona Fash­ion and a com­plete re­think on how things should be done. If Saló Gaudí pre­sented de­sign­ers, then this Gen­er­al­i­tat spon­sored or­gan­i­sa­tion pre­sents an en­tire in­dus­try and its aim is to pro­mote and de­velop the in­dus­try on all lev­els. Is it ex­clu­sive? Fash­ion tends to be ex­clu­sive, so to some ex­tent yes, but there is a real ef­fort made to rep­re­sent the enor­mous wealth of cre­ativ­ity this vital in­dus­try has to offer here in Cat­alo­nia. The co­op­er­a­tive de Alta Cos­tura was es­tab­lish­ment with the oc­ca­sional in­vi­ta­tion for new de­sign­ers thrown in. 080 makes a se­ri­ous at­tempt to put our tal­ented and in­no­v­a­tive new faces on the same level as world renowned Cata­lan de­sign­ers and fash­ion houses. Of enor­mous value and in­ter­est is the Barcelona Fash­ion sum­mit, a se­ries or round-ta­bles and con­fer­ences given by lead­ing fig­ures in the fash­ion world, which is held on the last day of the event. As cre­atives, con­fer­ences tend to be dif­fer­ent to other trade re­lated gath­er­ings, which at times con­cen­trate on solv­ing in­dus­try re­lated prob­lems. In­stead, talks such as these are ex­cit­ing and vi­brant af­fairs with cre­atives wel­com­ing new chal­lenges and the op­por­tu­ni­ties they pre­sent.

Is there a dan­ger of events such as 080 dis­ap­pear­ing in this dig­i­tal age? IT savvy fash­ion de­signer Núria Serra says no: “There is not a sin­gle pho­to­graph or YouTube video that can cap­ture some­thing like a cat­walk. It's what peo­ple want to see, it's the real thing. It's magic.”

And so it be­gins. The lights dim and we hold our ex­pec­tant, col­lec­tive breath, we know we are about to wit­ness some­thing spe­cial, we know there will be a mo­ment when some­thing we can­not de­scribe hap­pens. Sur­pris­ingly, a cat­walk will last from 20 to 40 min­utes only, but each mo­ment is filled with magic and we can­not help but fall help­less vic­tims to the thrill of it all.