The renaissance of Pertegaz
It was one of the most internationally recognized Spanish brands. Today, designer Jorge Vázquez seeks to return his relevance and brilliance to the firm created by Manuel Pertegaz 80 years ago. A story in two acts: from Ava Gardner to Zendaya.
María PorcelWhat would Manuel Pertegaz have done? That is the question that, seven years after the death of one of the most internationally recognized Spanish designers, is ringing in the heads of the handful of people, almost a hundred, in charge of continuing his legacy. The legend of the Teruel creator has not lost strength. Trained in Barcelona, his name sounded like a substitute for Christian Dior, he conquered the US market at the age of 36 and had clients as diverse as Ava Gardner, Salomé, Jacqueline Kennedy, Carmen Sevilla or Queen Letizia, whose wedding dress he signed in 2004. The challenge now is to return to the brand the relevance it had in its golden years, the fifties and sixties.
With the designer Jorge Vázquez in charge for a year and a half, the firm, which has managed to dress one of the icons of contemporary fashion —Zendaya—, revolves today around three enclaves: Barcelona, Madrid and Galicia . Mr. Pertegaz's office, as many continue to refer reverently to him, remains intact in Barcelona. There is located the administrative division of the group. But for years no dress has come out of its doors. Pertegaz's heirs —his nieces and Ángel Tribaldos, right-hand man for decades— maintain a large catalog of licenses. Different manufacturers are in charge of producing shoes, men's polo shirts, perfumes, umbrellas, purses, earrings and pens under the name of the designer.
And then there's women's fashion. That is where Galicia, the industrial leg, comes into play: Jealfer. As its general manager, Juan Manuel Morente, explains, it is "a company specialized in knitwear, founded in 1954, which has had the license to manufacture Pertegaz men's knitwear for 15 years, and women's knitwear for 15 years." 10”. And that in 2019 he convinced the designer's heirs to produce women's ready-to-wear and restore its shine. “We were excited to be able to make Pertegaz a premium national brand. It was a challenge because we are industrialists”, confesses Morente in his offices in Madrid.
There is a leap from making knitwear for men to sewing for women. A challenge. They dealt with it in several phases. The first and fundamental one —he recounts— was to reach an agreement with Barcelona: to ensure “a long-term, international project”. The heirs were pleased that their old partners decided to exploit this license and gave it to them for decades, although they avoid revealing how many. The next step was "to consolidate some qualified teams to be able to make textiles at that level". The Galician manufacturing tradition, increasingly diluted and delocalized, but still efficient, provided know-how. In April 2019 they launched a fall-winter collection. There was no great designer behind it, just that team that made its experience count. The applause was unanimous and Queen Letizia wore one of her designs in an act of the Prince of Asturias Awards. Don Manuel's heirs were happy.
The Madrid leg that rounds off the story arose in November 2019, with the entry into the project of the dressmaker Jorge Vázquez, at the helm of his eponymous brand for 20 years and seasoned at Inditex, Pernas, Ángel Schlesser or Loewe. "We always think: if we do it, we do it well," says Morente. Vázquez's (Betanzos, 49 years old) first show for Pertegaz in January 2020 was a success. An impressive catwalk in the Madrid City Hall, in the Cibeles palace, with a live orchestra and the models slipping through the public. “In each collection it is as if I were the Ronaldo of fashion: I go out to win. To be the best”, says Vázquez, half jokingly half seriously, in his offices in Madrid, right next to those of Jealfer, and where the garments of his firm and those of Pertegaz share hangers. “You have to set the bar high, we cannot live on income. And it would be very easy here: take basics, adapt them, put a label on them. But I am incapable, the day I see myself like this I will leave it. I have to do it right, not cover the file,” he says. Making that brand and hers compatible (four collections a year), plus her tailor-made sewing and the young line that she will launch in the coming months, has meant "a brutal change in her life." But his eyes make sparkles when he talks about the original studio on the Diagonal. “It's like he's alive there: his tapestry, his awards. Time has stopped. Can you imagine that he is going to open that door and come out”, he says impressed.
He visits it from time to time, without impediments, although he never enters the archive personally: he asks for patterns, colors, designs from certain periods, and they are taken out one by one. He incorporates those references into his shows. Some, very specific, almost literally: a large fuchsia taffeta dress, a detail of a flower. The Costume Museum, he says, has also made itself available to him, like many clients who call him to tell him: "I married a pertegaz."
That first collection, fall-winter 2020-2021, had a spectacular presentation. The second, spring-summer 2021, was not far behind: it was photographed in the Alhambra, the same setting in which, in 1968, Henry Clarke photographed several designs by Pertegaz —along with others by Pedro Rovira, Elio Berhanyer and Carmen Mir— for Vogue in a historic shoot.
The germ of this second proposal was more complex: Vázquez and his team devised it in the house that the designer has in Galicia, where they were surprised by the confinement. They planned to spend 15 days —as they do to prepare each collection— and ended up staying for three months. Now, without forced confinement, they have just finished the third, which will hit stores in the fall. This has been photographed at the Teatro Real, in Madrid, like the images that accompany these lines.
It is in Galicia where this new Pertegaz is created. There it is thought and there it is materialized by pattern makers, seamstresses and embroiderers. Both the industrialist and the creative lament the disappearance of their productive fabric. “In Spain, unfortunately, crafts are being lost. People want to be a designer and famous”, laments Vázquez. The firm intends to maintain its ambition in terms of the quality of its garments, but also in terms of its distribution strategy. If Don Manuel paraded in New York, Texas, Boston or São Paulo, in the 21st century this international visibility has come from celebrities. From Sharon Stone to Priyanka Chopra or Zendaya, princess of television and the networks. At the moment, they do not work with any showroom in Los Angeles: they are the ones who are contacting stylists who, in search of something new and classic, European and different, open the doors for them. Doors that, little by little, try to unlock others: those of a physical store. "When everything stabilizes a bit, the first one we will inaugurate will be in Madrid," says Vázquez. They had already had their eye on a couple of places that with the pandemic they put on pause. Now they sell in multi-brand boutiques and in the three that the dressmaker has in Madrid, Palma and Santander. "I speak for myself, but I think it would be essential to recover Barcelona, even if it is a small space," dreams Vázquez. It was there that Manuel Pertegaz opened his first workshop in 1942. Six years later, he was dressing the gentry and the Spanish aristocracy. He eventually had 700 employees, sold his collections in some of the most prestigious department stores in the United States such as Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue, starred in editorials for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and received the Medal of Fine Arts (1999) and the Award National of Fashion Design (2009).
The industrial vision is not as romantic as that of Vázquez. Jealfer thinks, above all, of consolidating itself, "with a very clear international vocation, its own points of sale and great digital support". The spotlights point to the North American and Asian markets. In the pandemic, the company has shored up its internal management, which sounds less glamorous than opening a store with a shiny sign, but is critical. “Our down-to-earth, industrial spirit cannot be lost. We have to go step by step”, admits Morente. "There is a new starting point, with the values of 2020 but more solid, wickers to face the coming years with guarantees."
Pertegaz wants to grow. This is no longer the sixties, but the volumes, the polka dot and the fuchsia color - hallmarks of the brand - are still alive in 2021. And on these pillars the mother house, the Galician licensee and Jorge Vázquez want to build the future. The designer has been in fashion for almost three decades, but he never met Pertegaz. “I would have liked it a lot, more now. He was a genius. You say: ‘How would I do this…? The great question.
About the firm
María PorcelGraduated in Journalism and Audiovisual Communication, she has a Master's degree from the UAM-El País School of Journalism, and has been linked to EL PAÍS for more than a decade. She has gone through Cadena Ser, SModa and El HuffPost, where she implemented the Social Networks strategy and worked in the Trends section. He has also written for Vanity, Business Insider or Marie Claire.
Standards
