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Interview
6 September 2015 2.00 h

An insider speaks out

Miriam Victoria, president of the Associació Moda de Catalunya i Balears, talks fashion to Catalonia Today

It is hard to imag­ine that the woman who sits in front of me on the ter­race of Begur's Hotel el Con­vent began her pro­fes­sional life as a model at the ten­der age of 14, but as the in­ter­view pro­gresses I un­der­stand that her depth of knowl­edge of the fash­ion in­dus­try, and es­pe­cially as it re­lates to Cat­alo­nia, has been learned on the in­side and that there is lit­tle on the sub­ject that she is not per­fectly qual­i­fied to speak about. She im­presses with her clear and di­rect re­sponses and the care­fully con­sid­ered ob­ser­va­tions she has used to form her opin­ions.

Your or­gan­i­sa­tion, what does it do?
We started up in 2006 and our work, as a non-profit, is to pro­vide sup­port for the in­dus­try. We put on shows and or­gan­ise pro­mo­tions, but there is a lot more to it than that. De­sign­ers, for ex­am­ple can only do so much and need help to de­velop busi­ness re­sources. We can help with things like brand­ing, de­vel­op­ing mar­ket­ing skills and so on. Often it is a mat­ter of putting the right peo­ple to­gether and let­ting them get on with the job.
Cata­lan fash­ion. Where is it now?
The cri­sis hit all sec­tors of the in­dus­try hard, very hard. It has not been easy watch­ing peo­ple I know very well go through such dif­fi­cult times. Right now, we seem to be turn­ing a cor­ner and there are signs that we are com­ing out of that.
What signs are those?
The de­val­u­a­tion of the Euro has helped a lot be­cause at pre­sent there is more hope in ex­ter­nal mar­kets. The in­ter­nal mar­ket will take a lit­tle longer. And then of course there is the na­ture of fash­ion it­self. It is im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that fash­ion is all about change and adapt­ing and chal­lenge. That is part of the magic of the in­dus­try. This also means that it is an in­dus­try which sees a cri­sis in a dif­fer­ent way. Those who come through this will be those who have been able to use that change to their ad­van­tage.
And this ex­ter­nal mar­ket?
We un­der­es­ti­mate Asia. We tend to think of Asia as mass-pro­duc­tion, poor qual­ity and cheap at the same time. We have to change the way we think about that. The mar­ket there is mas­sive and it is hun­gry for fash­ion. We have to learn to take ad­van­tage of what they have to offer us as an in­dus­try, and there is a lot. How­ever, there is some­thing fun­da­men­tal that we have that they are lack­ing: de­sign. We have de­sign and de­sign­ers.
So, just how do our de­sign­ers get them­selves known?
Like any­thing, hard work. Per­sis­tence. Never giv­ing up. Fight­ing. Show after show after show. You have good de­signs and peo­ple like them. They re­mem­ber them when they see them again. But good brand­ing makes sure that peo­ple recog­nise that they are your de­signs. That's im­por­tant for de­sign­ers. Con­tacts. De­vel­op­ing a busi­ness model. It's ex­tremely dif­fi­cult. In the as­so­ci­a­tion we can pro­vide a lot of that.
By that do you mean new­com­ers, small com­pa­nies, free­lance de­sign­ers?
It is the same for every­one. They are just work­ing on dif­fer­ent scales but they need the same skills and their own busi­ness model.
Many de­sign­ers now sell ex­clu­sively on-line. Is that the fu­ture?
Al­most def­i­nitely not. It is a model that works at pre­sent but some­thing else will take it's place, and quite soon. The in­dus­try must adapt im­me­di­ately. The de­sign side can do that, the sup­port model may have prob­lems and that goes for the big names as well as the new­com­ers. In five years' time things will be com­pletely dif­fer­ent. That's fash­ion.
Is Barcelona 080 mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion for Cata­lan fash­ion?
I came up through the years of Saló Gaudí and 080 is a big im­prove­ment; it's run by peo­ple in the in­dus­try so it is a re­sponse to the needs of the in­dus­try.
Peo­ple say that dur­ing New York Fash­ion Week, New York be­comes fash­ion. Is that pos­si­ble here? Are we miss­ing some­thing?
Glam­our. I'd say glam­our. Look at the front rows of shows in New York or Lon­don. They are filled with ac­tors, peo­ple from the worlds of sport and cul­ture. These peo­ple bring glam­our. They en­hance the magic. Fash­ion weeks put de­sign­ers on dis­play to buy­ers, they aren't re­ally pub­lic events, but it all helps. We need more glam­our.
What about glam­our in re­gards to top mod­els? Isn't that a big part of the glam­our that you are talk­ing about?
That is one thing that has changed a lot over re­cent years, and that is a very good thing. For a num­ber of years, the fig­ure of the 'top' be­came far too im­por­tant. Peo­ple came to the shows to see these peo­ple who caught the head­lines day in, day out. Every­one was talk­ing about them and what they were doing. What mod­els are sup­posed to do is to get peo­ple talk­ing about what they are mod­el­ing. It was not a good sit­u­a­tion and, thank­fully, it has changed. Mod­els are there to serve fash­ion.
Part of this year's pro­gramme at 080 was putting de­sign­ers to­gether with in­vestors.
This is def­i­nitely a good move. This is one area we deal with in the as­so­ci­a­tion. How­ever, one of the most im­por­tant things is get­ting money to un­der­stand fash­ion and de­sign­ers to un­der­stand money. That's not easy. In­vestors must un­der­stand that in­vest­ing in fash­ion is dif­fer­ent. De­sign­ers need to know that in­vestors need to see a re­turn on their in­vest­ment in a rea­son­able time. Peo­ple who in­vest in fash­ion are not usu­ally what you might call a 'typ­i­cal' in­vestor.
Haute Cou­ture. Is it still around?
Of course. It's just a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to fash­ion. Fash­ion is like any com­mod­ity, it's a ques­tion of sup­ply and de­mand. There is a de­mand and I imag­ine that there al­ways will be a de­mand for high fash­ion. To some ex­tent it is in a class of its own.
Where do we stand in Cat­alo­nia in terms of ed­u­cat­ing and de­vel­op­ing the de­sign­ers of the fu­ture?
We have ex­cel­lent de­sign schools here. The fact that we have a long tra­di­tion in de­sign in all areas means that ed­u­cat­ing for de­sign is im­por­tant and it is some­thing that has con­tin­ued over the years. But it is some­thing we need to main­tain and not take for granted.
So if I were to ask you for names to watch out for, who would you sug­gest?
I wouldn't do that, for two rea­sons. Firstly, from a pro­fes­sional point of view, our as­so­ci­a­tion sup­ports and pro­motes all de­sign­ers and peo­ple in fash­ion, so to sin­gle out one or two would be un­fair. But even more to the point is that I wouldn't know where to start. Quite hon­estly, there are just so many re­ally good de­sign­ers out there. We have so many tal­ented peo­ple. What is im­por­tant is they get the chance to be seen. Many of them won't and that is such a pity, and that's why we need to do all we can to make sure they have every op­por­tu­nity pos­si­ble.

Taking on the world

If there is one area where Catalonia has gained continuous recognition all over the world, despite crisis, global ups and downs, stiff opposition from the best of the best and constant challenge, we need look no further than our fashion and design industry. Last October, Catalonia Today launched a series of articles we titled Catalan Chic,, which began to investigate the nature of this fascinating industry. It proved no easy task, as fashion is a labyrinth that at every twist and turn holds new surprises. With summer out of the way, we head back out onto the catwalk in an interview with Miriam Victoria, president of the Associació Moda de Catalunya i Balears. Her debut in the world of fashion came at the age of 14, as a model. She now owns her own agency, Maxim Models (Barcelona, Madrid), is a business consultant and an expert in branding and promotion. Among all of this, somehow she has also managed to become a film maker.

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