Laura Ponte woman, from top model to designer: "The image is very powerful, convincing and deceptive"
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From a very young age, Laura Ponte (Vigo, 1973) designed clothes. “I made the first suit for an aunt of mine when she was 15 years old”, she explains. In her house in Puerta de Hierro, now converted, she has been running a tailor-made sewing and jewelry workshop for brides and guests for four years.
If you don't know her project, it's easy to guess that Laura Ponte's designs are elegant, something logical for a person with such a fashion culture. Having been an international top model sounds like that. But it is not easy to guess that her maternal grandfather was a tailor, and that for her clothes are not just the memory of how a very long Valentino dress she wore fitted on her hips, but much earlier, the sensation of the fabric between the fingers.
“Since we were little, we have made our own clothes. My grandfather had founded a clothing store with a tailoring part, and I remember my family looking at the fabrics. There was a lot of fashion culture in the coalfield. And everything was sold there, from fabrics for clothing to an umbrella or a coat, in that area where there were almost no shops”.
His mother was very fond of movies and shared that interest with her for those iconic images of women that appeared on the big screen. "Many times the things that attracted us as children are what we have done in this life, right?"
The House of the Mirror
“Now I am making custom wedding dresses”, she explains to MagasIN. “I have had a very curious professional life, but I still live with a kind of organized chaos, I never know what day it is and I never remember the years. I account for things in a different way”, he retorts.
She considers herself creative, at least from what she's told. “People say that I am very creative, I think that everyone has creativity, it does not only have to do with painting, it is a broader term. But yeah, my friends say I get ideas all the time."
He's self-taught, clearly. “Without a filter, I vomit ideas. I function a lot in the immediate, acting on an object. There is a lot of talk nowadays about creativity, I don't quite know how to define it, I think creative is better as an adjective”.
She describes herself as a person with imagination and who solves things quickly, “I generate things, I come up with many ideas, call it creative or restless”. In addition to his sewing work, he continues to be an image on occasion or supporting interesting initiatives. "Years ago I said that it was no longer my first intention, but if it is something very interesting, I accept."
She has been painting for years, designing jewelry, and this has given her an immediate pulse on “what is cooked and moves, on an artistic level, how it is communicated,…”. There are summers that she spends entire days drawing. More than observers, he says he needs accomplices, and more than drawing or painting static scenes, telling stories.
Water and cotton
What does Laura Ponte think of fashion? “I don't believe half of the things, I don't do outfits or anything, but as an industry I still find it very interesting. Sometimes I see things that I like and it gives me an interesting vibration of what is happening in society”. For her, "the image is very powerful, very convincing and very deceptive."
And the clothes you make?
It's clothes that I'm commissioned to do, I like to work with each person, who has a character, who moves in a certain way... The wedding dress is something very specific anyway, it's about a certain day in the that many times there is a family and social commitment, many ingredients to reconcile. It depends on where you marry, with whom, a lot of people are involved in that process: it has a psychological part that I am very attracted to.
Do you enjoy that co-creation process with each woman?
I love beautifying and I like to see each beautiful woman, bring out the best, in what they perhaps had not thought of or did not dare, due to complexes or mistaken ideas, give them confidence...
How are your clients?
Of all kinds. When they come, I promise to do something together. Sometimes, to make something, other times, to transform something, which may be less expensive, but more logical.
That will be less economically interesting as a businesswoman, right?
I'm not much of a businessman, I've never liked numbers. I am very fair and it is difficult for me to generate and sell something that they do not need. I would live on barter, the real value of things depends on the needs.
Still, you're succeeding...
Let's say I maintain a team, so that alone is doing well. I am happy and excited, I love the girlfriends I work with and with whom a relationship is established, sometimes temporary and sometimes not. Now are difficult times...
You've been successful in the past and you're succeeding again...
I've been very lucky. I made a lot of money compared to people my age, but I'm not ambitious, I think that money is not the most important thing every day.
And what is important?
For me, for example, being calm, enjoying what you do and the people around you...
“It's my own invention”
What is your typical day like?
I have a great time every day, no one takes me away from my sorrows, of course, but I am positive, and the truth is that I try to laugh a lot and have a good time whenever I can. I think I get excited very easily. My days are changeable, sometimes new people come to tell me about their project and I love that.
Do you like to talk to different people every day?
I love meeting people, but I have a very short memory, so I can't gossip about it.
What is the process you use to create the garments like? I have read that you do it without a pattern, placing fabrics on top of the person.
I start from scratch, no one tries on something that's out there and I convince them it's great. We decide day by day what the dress will be like, I do it over them, things settle down, I spend as much time as necessary with them, going little by little. It is a very conscious process.
Anything that repeats itself or what do you tend to do?
No, each dress is different, of my own invention. Perhaps I would like to do more different things, but I think that people are always posting ideas.
Do you publicize these models of, say, haute couture or artisans?
There are people who decide to publish it, many brides do not want to show it and that is respected, of course.
The non-souvenirs
The most beautiful dress you've ever seen?
I am not a mythomaniac person, I have met very beautiful people, but I have seen clothes that did not correspond to the person, that they had to wear to each other, something is not pretty if you are uncomfortable. On the other hand, after everything I've seen, I don't remember anything, nor from whom, nor from where I saw it.
That is a sign of good intelligence or self-absorption...
And this doesn't just happen to me with fashion, with painting, for example, the same thing happens to me. I see things I like, but I don't remember the name.
An infallible designer?
I assure you that I have worn wonderful clothes from many people, and from those same designers things that I did not like.
Is your role very different now, on the other side, also being known?
Yeah, it's very different. But think that for many people I am nobody. Girls who are not from my generation have no idea who I am. In any case, I think that the name is always associated with a character. There are people who call you because they like what you communicate... it depends.
What do you think about that, about fame?
When you're a name is when people at 22 or 23 like you. Then I was another Laura because I had another fame outside of my work and now I am Laura Ponte again. There are brands that believe that I represent them in some way.
In what way?
Maybe I like it because it seems that it's easy to work with me, I don't cause many problems, I also always warn, in my agency they know it, that I am a size 40-42, 48 years old, and I don't do lingerie. In the photos they take of me, sometimes they remove my wrinkles and other times they don't [jokes].
On the other side of the mirror
So you don't consider yourself from another planet.
I'm very streetwise, with a very accessible physique, there are people who see me strange [jokes]. In the photo I don't look so weird, I'm an approachable, gesticulating, expressive person.
There is talk of an intensity in the way you pose.
Intense, hahaha [laughs spontaneously]. I haven't been afraid to be expressive, I don't think expression takes away my little beauty. When I worked abroad they told me that I looked more like an actress than a model, but I honestly don't understand what people's concept of beauty is, what have we done so wrong that now there is this obsession of girls with filters: that pluperfect beauty is horrendous .
So you don't consider yourself to have a certain intensity?
I spend the day laughing, I swear, it's my favorite thing in the world. I have been very shy and in my work that part of me has worked more. I don't go to places and place myself in the center, but I laugh with people and I hate people who believe something with others.
However, there are very serious choices (like the wedding dress).
Look, a sense of humor is like air, we need it, and more in these times. I am very cheerful and rarely feel offended. I have looked at it a lot, I listen to it a lot and if I don't show much it is because of many things that have happened to me, with that exposure people create quick images of people.
What do you expect from 2022?
I live from day to day and with my children, who have a very long life project. Sometimes I have to think, as my mother says, that 'you can't live so up to date', but the future is today. It is true that life commits you in a different way, but I have no plans, to be in good health and that my day to day goes well... What a barbarity of horrible things happen and we see them with astonishing tranquility, don't you think?
And what about your children's education?
You can't control whether they go as they are. I try to make them reflective, open, they have to do the same exercise that I do, but children have much healthier instincts, they don't get deformed and I don't deform them! We have to worry about others, especially in the society in which we live, and for the world that surrounds us, take care of it.
Who or what inspires you?
I have a lot of female friends who surprise me in many ways, who are very close and who are anonymous. I am very impressed by people who take care of other people. I have a friend of mine called María Palacios who has a foundation, five children, the second with cerebral palsy and it's incredible what her children are like, what that family is like, how they have promoted an early care center... I am inspired by women who have families and children and that they are generous and do anything for anyone. And it turns out that if you look a little, the world is full of women who are capable of taking care of their own, that of others and are in a good mood all the time. Those are the people I like, the group of women that surround me. I need by my side, to have a healthy and good energy, they are not lazy for life at all...
Reflections in front of the mirror
Any recent reflection to accompany you?
Before I was thinking again and I share it with you, that there are things from our selective memory that we must erase almost for mental health.
You mean tragic?
Look, I am surrounded by people with a great head, with reflection and analysis and I have no memory... But lately, I also wonder how we can remember things in a healthy way, what space we have to leave for things that really are important and what things we have to forget every day.
A healing oblivion?
Health also has to do with what point to leave that margin of memory, so that it is indestructible and that what we remember no longer matters to us. What part of memory do we have to keep, that it be the good one, that it be present, and which one to control so that it does not hurt us every day... A memory that allows us to breathe and work, and generate good things and be well.
