The designer Juanjo Oliva presented a capsule collection on Tuesday with the aim of offering a range of interchangeable garments that “enrich” the female wardrobe, which also includes bridal designs ‘prêt-à-porter’.
The designer fashion sector and its creators are adapting to the new times in which the collections are reduced and seek to be suitable for all seasons (“yesterday it was sunny and today, it’s raining”, Oliva points out), without sacrificing quality and design, and where online sales are here to stay.
On Tuesday, surrounded by the scent of spring, intense colours and flowers, Juanjo Oliva (Madrid, 1971) presented at the Floristería Loreto Aycuens an “oasis in the middle of the city”, a collection created with calm, adapted to “the times in which we live”, but without renouncing the brand’s DNA, the designer told Efe before the fashion show.
Specialising in event fashion, Oliva has not wanted to renounce sophistication, but he is aware that garments now require more than one use, even in the case of brides, which he updates with simpler designs, where his refined way of working is evident.
In this new collection he has opted for “deconstructing” his taste for refined dresses and transferring it to blouses, skirts and trousers that can be interchanged with other garments and can be adapted to different times of the day. A range of pieces with which to “enrich the feminine wardrobe”.
Green cotton twill coats, pinstripe fabrics and smoothed yellow linen are some of the pieces presented, made from patterns from other seasons’ collections and leftover fabrics, even fabrics bought from other designers. “Fabrics with a great presence and of great quality” that, instead of being discarded, have been used to create a collection with sustainable value.
For Oliva, this is nothing new or simply a novelty that arrived with the pandemic. “I have never liked fashion to be associated with buying for the sake of buying”, a reason why he has broken away from the concept of temporality. The current situation has highlighted a situation in fashion that “had to reflect” on calendars, immediacy and sustainability: “Now customers talk about the traceability of garments and want to see themselves represented”.
The designer from Madrid is proud to be part of the so-called Spanish designer fashion. “It is a discourse that makes us strong like a union and defines our way of working”, small collections linked to the customer. A way of becoming stronger in a sector paralysed by the crisis.
“Fear immobilises you and that doesn’t help the business”, said Oliva, who has discarded the word “no” from his vocabulary and advocates for allowing beauty to flood everything. “I think we are in a purer and more honest stage in which we have to flee from the established and be freer to do different things”, he pointed out.
He is jumping on the bandwagon by modernising his way of approaching the customer through the digital platform ‘Es Fascinante’, specialising in slow multi-brand fashion, made in Spain. “Online sales are here to stay and I wanted to explore this territory”, she says, so some of her garments will be part of it and she will analyse its development and how to approach this business channel.
“We must all be part of this evolution”, concluded Oliva, who presented his proposal as part of the Madrid is Fashion event, an initiative led by the Asociación Creadores de Moda de España (ACME) under the umbrella of Madrid Fashion Capital of the Madrid City Council, which is linked to the closing of the week of shows at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Madrid.