La Lantejuela (Spain) (AFP)
Hope of fashion, Nicolas Montenegro was trained in Milan and designed clothes for Beyoncé or Rosalia.
But the pandemic has led this young designer to return to his native village in Spain to launch his brand there.
Far from the fashion capitals, this 31-year-old couturier, who cut his teeth at Dolce & Gabbana, receives AFP in La Lantejuela, a village of 3,800 inhabitants near Seville (south).
On the worktable, sketches and samples of fabrics - crepe, velvet, taffeta.
In the workshop, wedding dresses, spools of colorful threads made locally, family photos and even a ham, a central product in Spain.
Its three employees, residents of the village, cut the fabrics and make patterns.
“No need to be physically in a big city” thanks to new technologies, says this slender designer with sparkling eyes with confidence.
After a stint at the prestigious Istituto Marangoni in Milan, Nicolas Montenegro spent four years at Dolce & Gabbana, notably dressing Madonna, Beyoncé, Kylie Minogue, Monica Belluci and even Melania Trump.
Back in Spain in 2018, he worked in Barcelona for the Yolancris label and designed the spectacular pink pleated tulle dress worn by Spanish pop star Rosalia at the Latin Grammys.
- Online collections -
But everything changed last March with the pandemic and containment.
After spending 14 years far from his native village, the creator returns there to spend more time near his father, who then had cancer and then died of the coronavirus in November.
"Encouraged" by this father, an entrepreneur of humble origin, Nicolas Montenegro finally decides to stay and launch his brand in the village, designing a first collection of wedding dresses, called "Abril".
Sober, elegant dresses, sold for 2,500 euros each in Spain, the United Kingdom and Greece, imbued with her taste for vintage.
He is now preparing an autumn / winter collection of mainly female ready-to-wear, inspired by the tapestries adorned with deer, tigers and peacocks brought back by his father from his military service in the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara in 1971.
A collection that will be launched in March in Madrid and especially online, pandemic requires.
What the young designer sees as an advantage.
"In the parades, everything goes so fast - Chanel, Dior, etc. - that you don't have time to enjoy it before everyone forgets", he judges.
“I launched the collection of wedding dresses online, I made a promotional video, and each dress had its video,” he explains.
A much more "functional" choice, defends Nicolas Montenegro who bet on women's fashion, unlike other Spanish designers, such as Arturo Obegero, Archie Alled-Martínez or the Oteyza brand who presented at Paris fashion week masculine or 'genderless' pieces.
- Palomo Spain, a benchmark -
The opening of her workshop has boosted the economy of a village, devastated as elsewhere by the pandemic, which has a know-how dating back to several generations of seamstresses expert in flamenco dresses or children's clothing.
"Considering the situation, he helps us all a lot", because "there is nothing else" in the village, judges one of the employees of the workshop, Estefanía Ponce, a 38-year-old mother.
Nicolas Montenegro shares his philosophy with Alejandro Palomo, a young 28-year-old designer at the head of the Palomo Spain brand, which also opened his workshop in his hometown of Posadas, 75 km from La Lantejuela.
"Without the village we would be nobody", he says, praising the work of his colleague, a successful combination of Spanish traditions and modernity thanks to which the world of fashion "looks again at" Spain "at the foreign".
© 2021 AFP