Modern craftswomen to the rescue of luxury
A symbol of exquisiteness and sustainability, in addition to being a dynamic tool in rural areas, traditional arts and crafts find more and more supporters. This is how we work to give continuity to the Spanish legacy from ingenuity, business risk and innovation. A creative heritage that diversifies and spreads.
Rafael Rodriguez"Search for craftswomen and techniques to promote trades and co-design in Spain". This is how La Hacería is advertised; the new Google of manual know-how in our country. Platform for creative and business development, here is the tool, if not definitive, then more necessary than ever to connect the fashion industry and tradition, an ideal that has long been longed for at least by the former and is related to that political agenda of ecological transition and transformation digital promoted by the current Government. Finding experts and specialties with a simple click —with detailed information on their jobs, contacts and locations— is, in this case, just one part of the initiative. What it is about is disseminating and revitalizing such ancient work and, above all, sharing that knowledge and generating synergies between brands and artisans. “I have always been very limited in accessing the artisan techniques that I wanted to incorporate into my collections. Diving on the internet without finding anything concrete was frustrating for me. Only after a lot of research did I end up with my little list of producers. Expanding it and sharing it was the next step for me”, explains Moisés Nieto, the designer who has woven this network of collaborative and transdisciplinary creation with a view to the future.
Launched at the end of September, La Hacería is the first project awarded by the competition launched last year by Madrid Capital de Moda, an economic-cultural organization of the Madrid City Council to turn the city into the epicenter of Spanish design, with the help of the Spanish Fashion Creators Association (ACME) and under the 2020-2022 Strategic Plan for Subsidies of the Government Area of Economy, Innovation and Employment. Sustainability, the commitment to value for craftsmanship and international reach are the parameters that define an award endowed with 60,000 euros and a vocation to boost the business projection of our designers, in addition to spurring specialized training in the sector. “I think that what won over the jury was that the selection of artisans that we presented was very young, all under 35 years of age,” Nieto supposes. The creator from Jaén (Úbeda, 1984) places special emphasis on the feminine aspect of his search engine/collaboration network, not only because needle and thread work employs —almost by convention— a greater number of women, but also because they are the ones who seem more determined to recover and evolve the old arts and crafts. “There is a batch of very young, incredibly innovative girls who use technology in their production processes without fear”, continues the designer. “These techniques are everyone's heritage, but those of us who work in fashion have a great deal of responsibility in ensuring that they are not lost,” he says.
The problem is that few have accounted for the issue in recent times. The official report that is still going on is more than five years old, that study on the Situation of crafts in Spain with which the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism wanted to analyze the main economic variables and the competitiveness of manual work that contributes to 2.4% of industrial GDP, or, in global terms, 0.4% of gross domestic product. At that time, around 38,000 companies were counted, employing 125,000 workers and billing around 4,000 million euros a year. 2015 data that has not been updated. Today this is the reality: more than 80% of the artisans in our country are invisible for economic purposes, as reported in March by Oficio y Arte, the Organization of Artisans of Spain (OAE). Non-profit, La Hacería has the support of Fundesarte, a reference institution since 1981 in the promotion and development of national crafts. It is the same entity that, for example, manages the National Crafts Awards, which this year will be awarded at the end of December. The designer admits that actions such as this one, or the international Craft Prize of the Loewe Foundation, mark the way forward insofar as they serve to “create awareness among consumers, who appreciate the author component. Elevating craftsmanship to luxury and the aspirational is very good, but the really important thing is to put a face on it, which is how the work behind it is best valued”.
At the moment, there are a hundred faces in La Hacería. Clara Vignal, Moisés Nieto's right hand in the project, is in charge of the arduous tracking and establishing the first contact with the artisans. “We have a selection process, because not all meet the requirements. It's not about crafts, they have to be professionals and be willing to evolve", explains the creator, whose team is also in charge of improving the communication, image and profile of the chosen ones, in addition to putting them in contact with each other, or with different companies that can benefit from their knowledge and thus create a community. Nieto, by the way, continues to speak in feminine, although there are artisans (few) on the platform. At the moment, the bulk is located in the Community of Madrid (close to 85%), although it is already expanding horizons in Galicia, Catalonia, Andalusia, the Basque Country and Valencia.
"This is a communication platform that makes us feel that we are not alone," admits Lorena Madrazo, one of the first signings. Visual designer and textile artist based in Madrid, the creator of Appsolescence —which she defines as a research/creation space between the tangible and the digital— has been at the forefront of contemporary crafts since 2017 thanks to her wool garments and decorative tapestries. A profile to which the experimental embroiderer Carmen Castañeda or the ceramist Déborah Abizanda also respond. “The panorama is a bit crude, true, but it seems that with the pandemic time has been on our side. People value more and more the quality product, made by hand, with care. Now all that is needed is for the economic and dissemination part to respond as well”, continues Madrazo, one of the five artisans —along with Irene Infantes, Inés Rodríguez, the More More studio and Teresa Martín Mingorance— who is co-designing his collection of autumn-winter 2022-2023. “We sat down in April to talk and discuss the proposals and together we see how we can give the garments the right handcrafted twist. Where I can find a problem, they see an opportunity”, says the designer, to whom the Royal Tapestry Factory has provided its surplus hand-dyed wool yarn. The intention is that the result will be presented in the middle of next year in Japan, a market that Nieto has dominated for five years.
Another young designer also aspires to conquer global markets for contemporary crafts, although in his case the initiative stems from his disagreement with the clothing business. Daniel Rabaneda (Marchena, 1986) was going to hope for Spanish fashion, first with his own banner —which he founded in 2011, at the age of 24— and later as creative director called to reformulate Ángel Schlesser, in 2018. Until suddenly he found himself no brand and no charge. A traumatic experience that led him to withdraw from design in 2020. "I still have the enthusiasm for my work, no one can take that away from me, but I needed some time to reflect to decide what I wanted to do." His meeting, it would be said providential, with the also French designer of Spanish origin Rosemary Rodríguez (curiously, he took over from Paco Rabanne, Sevillian's uncle, when he left his firm in 2000, and then at the head of Thierry Mugler) just before the pandemic finished lighting the way. “There were many hours of talk and confidences, because we have both been scalded from the industry. We didn't know exactly what we were going to do, but we were motivated to focus on our cultural legacy,” she says. This is how Rodríguez + Rabaneda emerged, an umbrella brand to support its particular selection of trades and techniques/disciplines attached to the artistic heritage. "The mission is to support the new generations of artisans, who work with a very sustainable concept, ethically committed and with a modern vision of that know-how that they have learned or inherited by family tradition," explains the creator.
The formula is that of a common electronic commercial platform, although Rodríguez + Rabaneda is actually a kind of artisan curatorship. “We function as publishers within the brand. We study the profiles that interest us, what kind of work they develop, and from there we establish collaboration: we choose the products that we believe best represent, let's say, the Iberian lifestyle and we develop a collection to sell exclusively”, continues Rabaneda, who describes his project as an experience based above all on emotions. For this reason, apart from basketry, pottery, cordage or specifically textile work associated with fashion, this next digital meeting point will also accommodate gastronomy, oenology or candle making. From the end of November, the craft revenge is served.
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