Nicolás Montenegro, the designer who from his town is committed to haute couture

Lantejuela, Spain, Feb 3, 2021- Far from the fashion capitals and after dressing Rosalía and Beyoncé, the Spanish designer Nicolás Montenegro decided in the midst of a pandemic to return to his town to launch his brand. With technology, having to live in a big city is a thing of the past. The 31-year-old women's fashion designer with Dolce & Gabbana receives AFP in his workshop in Lantejuela, the Andalusian town of 3,800 inhabitants where he grew up.

On the work table, hand sketches and fabric samples (beading, velvet, taffeta...); to one side, dresses from his bridal collection; in the background, colorful spools of locally made thread; and, here and there, family photos and even a leg of ham.

Her three employees, all neighbours, work hard on cutting and pattern making. "They are interesting fabrics; they are feathers, they are brocade...", says Leticia Álvarez, with previous experience in India and Turkey at the age of 28.Family and people are the pillars of this designer with a slender figure and cheerful look, confident in his business because with the internet and airplanes, "it is not necessary to have a physical residence in a big city."

The road has been long for this boy, who as a child dressed dolls and matched his younger sister's clothes with such success "that she was a virguería," recalls his mother, Ana Valle. After training at the prestigious Marangoni Institute in Milan, he worked for Dolce & Gabbana in the Lombard capital. He proudly lists the stars he has dressed: Madonna, Beyoncé, Kylie Minogue, Monica Belluci, Melania Trump...

In 2018 she went to Barcelona with Yolancris and, that same year, she designed the spectacular pink pleated tulle dress that the Spanish singer Rosalía wore before collecting her first Latin Grammys.

Family, a source of inspiration

But everything changed in March with the pandemic and the confinement. After 14 years away, Nicolás Montenegro returned to Lantejuela to spend more time with his father, then suffering from cancer and who died of coronavirus in November. The designer found a shock in his father, a prosperous businessman of modest origin - "he always encouraged me to create my company" -, and in the women of his family, like his sister, "a fighter" and lover of good clothing.

The first collection of her namesake brand, "Abril", was wedding dresses. Elegant, sober, timeless garments -due to its attachment to vintage- and original in the daring use of bows and careful cotton lace. It sold in Spain, the United Kingdom and Greece, for around 2,500 euros per piece, and for June/July it is preparing a new bridal collection.

At the same time, he is working on the autumn/winter collection, mainly prêtà porter for women (dresses, shirts, jacket suits, coats), with the occasional men's garment (shoes, shirt). He will have an emotional nod to his father, since which among the motifs has been inspired by the exotic tapestries that he brought back in 1971 from his military service in Western Sahara: deer, tigers, peacocks...

The promotion will be done in March from Madrid and digitally, something that this designer, somewhat iconoclastic towards the artifice of the fashion world, sees as an advantage."Everything goes so fast at the shows -Chanel, Dior, etc.-, that there is no time to enjoy it, and then everyone forgets" what they have seen, he asserts. "I launched the bridal collection digitally, I made a promotional video, and each dress went with its video", which was much more " functional", apostille.

The benchmark for Palomo Spain

Her adventure has instilled activity in a town hit like so many by the stoppage of the pandemic and with a savoir-faire appraised from generations of women experts in sewing flamenco dresses and clothing children."The situation as it is is helping us all a lot", because "there is nothing else", says Estefanía Ponce, a 38-year-old mother of a family.

Montenegro is firmly committed to women's fashion, unlike its Spanish contemporaries such as Oteyza, Arturo Obegero or Archie Alled-Martínez, who triumphed in the men's fashion shows in Paris with garments that tend to be "genderless".

The one from Lantejuela highlights Alejandro Palomo, founder of the firm PalomoSpain (28 years old), because thanks to his successful combination of Spanish traditionalism and modernity "they look at us again abroad". And in addition to friendship, he boasts a parallelism with Palomo -he has a workshop in his hometown of Posadas, 75 km from Lantejuela-, which reaffirms his philosophy. "If it weren't for the people, we would be nobody." (AFP)

Photo credit: Cristina Quicler / AFP