Cristina Pedroche's dress in Las Campanadas is a metaphor (and a museum piece): the history of the suit created by Manuel Piña, 'the Almodóvar of Spanish design', 30 years ago
FashionCreated in 1991 by the late Manuel Piña –known as “Almodóvar of Spanish design”– it symbolizes how a change of skin leads to a new rebirth. Exactly what we all expect from the coming year.
By Amaia Odriozola
Those interested in fashion in our country (in fashion, in its ability to condense the zeitgeist, culture, mood and aspirations of an era; not in fashion understood as trends) will have enjoyed the moment. Tonight, before a massive audience, Cristina Pedroche has welcomed 2022, causing half of Spain to comment, in her salons and on Twitter, on her transparent dress, made of iridescent openwork taffeta, with metallic finishes and a shell reminiscent of that of a beetle. Her comment about her outfit in the Bells of her has already become an end-of-the-year tradition, and the design chosen this time, of course, could not go unnoticed. Those who, we say, love fashion as the capsule in time that it can become, will have celebrated that many today discover the talent of the name that signs it: Manuel Piña. Today, two decades after his death, one of the most important Spanish creators of the late twentieth century and the greatest exponent of fashion within the Madrid Movida updates his important legacy in Spanish design.
The dress in question comes from the Spring/Summer 1991 collection by Manuel Piña (Manzanares, 1944-1994), one of the last that he presented at the Pasarela Cibeles (of which he was the founding designer). Upon his death, three years later, Piña bequeathed it to his hometown, in Ciudad Real. There he opened a museum that bears his name and that preserves the dress along with a multitude of his designs, as well as the history and definitive influence of the designer on the development of Spanish fashion. Today the magic of the Chimes has made this dress - exhibited as piece I.0116 at the Museum - once again put his name on everyone's lips.
Behind tonight's styling is the work of Josie, (José Fernández-Pacheco Gallego, Manzanares, 1980), journalist, stylist, personal friend of Pedroche, fellow countryman of Piña and well-known face of the social scene and fashion in our country. It is a personal tribute to Piña and also includes a winged cape created by Buj Studio (which has taken more than 580 hours of work between design and manufacturing) and accessories (helmet, nails and shoes) by Manuel Albarrán. The result, a reflection that is inspired by the metamorphosis of insects to make a metaphor about how a change of skin leads to a rebirth, which is exactly what we all expect from the year that begins. The connection between this design from 20 years ago and the spirit of the times we live in is truly poetic.
For Josie, Pedroche's styling in the Chimes (which he has been doing since he began presenting them seven years ago), is a celebration of fashion, life and that "energy" that his friend transmits to her. She tells us that she has waited for the media focus to be “immense, in order to delve into the fashion messages behind it”. “They have always been styles that speak of what has happened that year in fashion, of the desires in that sense, of what could come to like... Thus we went from the transparencies to the tributes to historical designers that children could googling (I say children because they can discover new fashion stories through this event) or artistic collaborations such as the sculpture by Jacinto de Manuel that is from 2019 and that this year we have seen so similar in Schiaparelli, demonstrating that something of the spirit of the times falls each year on the Pedroche”, he explains. The choice of Piña, in fact, “is due to this spirit of the times, because there are 2021 collections that have led me to it, flashes of fashion that have appeared in the silhouettes of Jisoo Baik, Myung Cha, Shirley Tang, Chelsea Kaya, Yuimanakazato or some works by ASHI Studio and Richard Malone... I was wondering if it would be possible to bring one of those pieces that were so forerunners of these desires and make a style that would connect it with the 21st century, I was wondering if Piña could come back, for one night , to inspire the world again. No one deserves this tribute more than him because he left too soon, leaving a brilliant career in fashion behind, a victim of a pandemic with a social stigma as marked as HIV in those years... Everything was too silent for that Icarus who touching the sun with his wings he fell into the void”, reflects the stylist.
“When I was confined to Manzanares during the first wave and I felt that collective psychosis, I remembered that sick Manuel Piña who returned to La Mancha to die after having been one of the most interesting characters in the Madrid ointment during La Movida. He had already felt that sensation before (once again a visionary), I began to delve into his books and there were Elena Barquilla, Bibiana or Judith Mascó, dressed in incredible knitwear, regional fabrics in a futuristic key, cascading tails painted by COSTVS and photos of our mutual friends Alberto García Alix or Sylvia Polakov, who also died this year to top it off... It was time to use that enormous media focus and unite Pedroche with Piña. Today, thirty years later, she is part of that exclusive bunch of mythical muses that range from Carmen Maura to Rossy de Palma, which by the way is called that because Manuel Piña baptized her”, says Josie.
I can't be the only one who doesn't know how to order at Starbucks. It's overly complicated.
— Emma Tue Nov 10 21:09:06 +0000 2020
"The Almodovar" of design
At the age of 18, Piña left for Madrid. He worked at Galerías Preciados and El Corte Inglés, in the men's fashion department. That was too small for him and he tried his luck as a traveling salesman in a Carabanchel knitting factory, which he ended up buying when he turned 30. His mastery of knitting quickly brought him success and today he is referred to as the king of knitwear at the time: “He knew how to treat it and controlled the entire process because it was made in his workshop. At one point, the body asked him to switch to fabric and he had to outsource production. There, everything fell apart ”, another of his colleagues, Antonio Alvarado, would tell in S Moda.
In 1979 he paraded at the Liceo de Barcelona and at Pasarela Colón, a prelude to Cibeles. In 1981 he set foot in New York, although the business did not go well: they bought two collections from him valued at 18 million pesetas that, according to what he himself later said, were never returned to him. That was the first economic setback for him. A year later he represented Spanish fashion in Berlin together with Francis Montesinos. In 1985 he participated in the first edition of the Pasarela Cibeles, in a tent rented from the Teresa Rabal circus and installed in the Plaza de Colón: he had been one of the promoters of that together with Epifanio Mayo (first director of that catwalk). Three years later, he fulfilled every designer's dream: walking the catwalk in Paris.
Piña worked with the most important models: from Imán, David Bowie's wife, to Helena Barquilla, whom he discovered. "I met him in Ciudad Real, I'm from there. I was a test mannequin in her factory, because he sewed directly on the woman's body," Barquilla later recalled in LOC. All the actresses of the moment passed through his studio on Calle Moreto in Madrid: Rossy, Bibiana, Loles. Self-taught, he drank from great international creators such as Issey Miyake and Thierry Mugler. He signed a big deal to sell in Japan, a personal dream that turned out to be a fatal miscalculation (his new partner was actually bankrupt) that led to his closing. In 1990 he liquidated his company, which then had 30 employees. He designed a line of shoes, another of glasses and designed the uniform for the Post Office. His last public act took place in his store in Madrid, where he held a parade in homage to Camarón de la Isla, and once he was ill with AIDS he returned to spend his last years in Manzanares.
The collaboration between the Museum and Las Campanadas was conceived months ago. "The stars aligned," recalls Josie. Lola Piña, who was the designer's right-hand man (although they share a last name, they are not family), had contributed 300 new pieces to the Museum, so the stylist took the opportunity to pay tribute to her and establish a fashion dialogue that would connect Piña with 2022. Finding the outfit was not easy and it did not work out the first time. “Months passed and I saw in a retrospective at the Madrid Costume Museum a dress from his latest collection that, through transparencies, perfectly united Pedroche with the Manchego genius and was a sculptural silhouette similar to the circular pieces that evoked post-pandemic protection. and what I had seen in Jisoo Baik, Myung Cha, Shirley Tang and Chelsea Kaya…”
At the Manuel Piña Museum they also find this connection between the designer's vision and the times we live in. This is how the mayor of Manzanares, Julián Nieva Delgado, facilitator of this collaboration, explains it: “When Manuel Piña designed this dress, he already knew that he was retiring from prêt-à-porter, but as a fighting man he indicated that he was not leaving the world of design. but he wanted to do new things like design glasses and shoes. He changed, he transformed, and he reflected it in an experimental collection in which he let himself go and gave free rein to his creativity. As you say, he was inspired by insects and reptiles, in the transformation that some of them undergo, in the change of skin, in the different shades that the shells of some insects can have depending on the light that falls on them. And yes, with the current situation we are experiencing, with the changes we have had to make in our way of life, we need to renew and reinvent ourselves, change with the hope that from this chrysalis in which we are immersed we will come out stronger”, I He says. References to this need to be reborn can also be found today in fashion: “We are currently seeing creations by top-level designers that seem, in their volumes and shapes, to be recreations of iconic pieces by Manuel Piña. We have seen it recently with the Vera Wang design that Zendaya wore at the CFDAs, very similar in shape to the Manchego fabric skirt designed by Manuel Piña, or in the designs by Jisoo Baik, which uses ruffles that remind us of the dress that Manuel Piña designed in 1984 and that Juan Gomila painted for the Cotton and Art project”.
The magic of the Chimes
The Bells also represent a precious moment of exposure. Designing the styling for the night “is relevant because it is a mystery, because there is a ritual before the event, during and after, with the enormous debate that it creates and that has made it a classic. The key is not to leave anyone indifferent and Cristina Pedroche is like this: either you love her or you hate her, and her styling is created accordingly and so we will try to continue doing it and living and vibrating her, her bells, her outfits and me. Everything except the bland, love versus hate, happiness versus sadness, Antena 3 versus the rest of the proposals…” says Josie.
For Pedroche, this year's dress contains a great qualitative leap: “It is not the first time that I have worn a work of art at the chimes, but it is the first time that I have worn a museum piece. Ever since I started to take care of the styling for Las Campanadas, I wanted to present dresses made in Spain, exclusively for Cristina Pedroche, and for them to talk about the fashion of that year. In 2021 I have been able to see the spirit of Manuel Piña in the wishes of other contemporary creators and I understood that it was time to bring a piece of his museum to an event that means so much to me”. To the presenter's satisfaction, both the dress and the cape and accessories by Buj Studio and Manuel Albarrán will be exhibited throughout 2022 at the Manuel Piña Museum in Manzanares: "This styling is an invitation not only to this textile museum, but to all those museums far from the cultural circuit of the big capitals, because they treasure pieces as interesting as the one I have been lucky enough to take with me tonight…”, he tells us. Thus, this commitment to the design of Manuel Piña is also a vindication of spaces that keep alive the stories and works of fashion representatives in our country through textile museums but also all those museums outside the circle of fashion and circuit of the great capitals, which bring art to all corners of the country.
