“It all started with this wedding dress that my future sister-in-law was not convinced by,” says Spanish designer Manuel Fernández, pointing to a mannequin wearing a two-piece dress. It was a failure that paved the way for success, because after the rejection, it occurred to Fernández to ask the artist Juanjo Castillo to paint it to give it a 180 degree turn. And in this way the Fashion Art project was born, which celebrates its 20th anniversary with an exhibition at Can Marfà-Museo de Mataró, where you can see this iconic suit together with a completely white replica that the ceramic artist from Mataró Mia Llauder will be in charge of transforming. with his inspiration, and he will do it live in the same room.
The dress responsible for this project that fuses art and fashion will not be alone in the exhibition that opens this Friday and lasts until October 15. It is accompanied by another 28 suits that summarize the twenty years of Fashion Art’s journey, and that Manuel Fernández has meticulously selected.
“We can see an elegant piece dedicated to the preservation of the environment and in which the Catalan photographer and friend of Shakira, Jaume de la Iguana, has used digital photographic printing with images that are a mixture of soft drink containers; or this other one (a kind of shawl) in which the muralist Irene López León captures organic and degraded shapes in an impressive way”, boasts the designer while trying to give a mannequin more life with a couple of green scraps that he places in his hand .
The Magazine was able to visit the exhibition in the hours prior to the opening and, during the tour, Manuel Fernández was seen enjoying himself, leaving nothing to chance, like that child who collected the pins and admired the fashion in his mother’s workshops on Muntaner street. “It has been quite a challenge because having more than 300 plastic artists within the project and 46 participating countries, it is not easy to summarize it in 28 mannequins. But we have managed to achieve harmony in the exhibition both by genre of painters and female painters, countries, communities… all to achieve an exhibition where people can understand the concept of art and fashion”, explains the creative who more than 20 years ago discovered in his first exhibition that this was his thing.
Fashion Art has already carried out more than thirty exhibitions in museums around the world, with more than three million visitors. Innovative and always looking for new ways to express fashion, Fernández opted for fashion and art in a museum, although he acknowledges that it has not been an easy path: “when I met with gallery owners, even for some artists, the fact of painting a suit seemed to them from science fiction, they told me that it was going to harm me anyway. But the fact of having paraded in New York or being able to count on Manolo Valdés helped me a lot ”, he relates.
Fernández persevered until in 2003, in his first exhibition, he managed to bring together 50 renowned visual artists to participate in his designs. After many attempts to find the right museum, the show was hosted at the Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, with a resounding success, six months of exhibition and 300,000 visitors. Since then Fernández has been basting samples with different readings and in different settings.
“I was always clear that the quality of the project is in all the artists, at first I had those with a recognized trajectory, then I already had the opportunity to discover new talents, during these years I have been, for example, in Africa, in Zimbabwe, exploring colonies of artists in the middle of the jungle”, he says enthusiastically. Among many, the exhibition Fashion Art EU stands out, which received 400,000 visitors at the European Parliament, and the last exhibition at the Bahia Palace in Marrakech, with 350,000 visitors, which closed last March.
The costumes designed by Manuel Fernández are a three-dimensional canvas for each of the artists participating in the project, with a visible nod to sustainable fashion. The design of each dress is the result of a previous study in which each model tries to adapt to the style of the artist. The intention is the co-creation of a unique piece, under the premise that there are no limits to art or fashion design.
During these two decades, Spanish artists such as Manolo Valdés, Eduardo Chillida, Juan Genovés or Eduardo Úrculo, and Latin American artists such as the Ecuadorian Oswaldo Viteri, the Mexican Guillermo Ceniceros, the Colombian Maripaz Jaramillo or the Argentinean Pancho Luna have collaborated.
Fernández’s restless spirit has allowed him to be the first Spanish designer to walk the runway at New York Fashion Week, participation in the most important national catwalks or at the Gaudí Catwalk, as part of Barcelona Design. In 1992 he moved to Madrid to create a costume company for film, television and theater, where he began to dress actresses and singers such as Marta Sanchez or Rossy de Palma, among others.
“I have been in my career for 40 years and my first 20 years were with all this movement. Designers are used to spring-summer, autumn-winter collections, depending on whether this supplier pays you or not. That was starting to get boring for me, ”Fernández jokes when we ask him about his turn in his trajectory, although he occasionally confesses that he is bitten by the catwalks.
That curiosity that led him to create Fashion Art now also leads him to explore new terrain. Your next project of him? The launch of his virtual museum in 3D and an incursion into the metaverse: “I have made a collection of virtual dolls, there are 5,500 with different outfits designed by me and that will be put up for sale as NFTs”, advances the designer. Although for now the closest thing is the inauguration in Valencia of another exhibition where Valencian painters will participate and it will be inaugurated in the Post Office building on September 6.
Parallel to the development of the Fashion Art project, in 2007 Manuel Fernández created the Fashion Art Institute. “In Colombia I realized that through fashion and art a social good could be achieved. I contacted Lina Uribe, wife of then-President Álvaro Uribe, and we set up training for the widows of soldiers in clothing workshops that had been requisitioned from drug traffickers,” he recalls.
A story of social action that continues to bear fruit today. Since then, the designer has turned to a series of actions, especially in Latin America, that seek to empower people, especially those at risk of social exclusion. “I work with APRAMP with inclusive workshops for victims of trafficking from which I learn a lot from them and try to give them all my positive energy so that they see things in a different way and that they are capable of doing things for themselves,” he concludes.
The Mataró Museum will be the first to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Fashion Art project with a commemorative exhibition that not only expresses its appreciation for this project, but also seeks to reflect on the relationships between art, fashion and the sustainable development goals ( SDGs), which at this point are part of the great areas of reflection of many museums at a national and international level.
In this sense, the Mataró Museum is preparing family activities in which children can paint and have fun. There will also be workshops and a day of reflection and debate on the goals of sustainable development and fashion. All the programming can be consulted in Mataró culture.
Artists of different generations and very diverse geographical origins will participate in the exhibition, especially from the European and American continents such as Grimanesa Amorós, Chillida Belzunce, José Manuel Ciria, Ana Isabel Díez, Luis Gordillo, Agustín Ibarrola, Anna Jonsson, Jaume De Laiguana, Mia Llauder, Ouka Leele, Jorge Perugorria, Ro.Ro, Eduardo Úrculo, Marta Vega and Lucy Yegros, among others.
