“We had no idea it was going to end up on the red carpet”: Mans, the Spanish firm that dresses global star Shawn Mendes
The VMAs (Video Music Awards), where the American network MTV celebrates the best of the audiovisual scene, are not usually considered the most elegant event of the year. In fact, they can be a challenge to the eye: since 1984, they have staged a baroque feast of impossible outfits – from Busta Rhymes's kimono with pants in 1997 to Rose McGowan's nude gown, to Lady Gaga's carnivorous audacity in 2010 – which seems to defy the laws of any style referee.
The one held last Sunday seemed like an edition headed for the same destination. Madonna wore a dominatrix outfit. The rapper of the moment, Lil Nas X, was from Versace. Nothing suggested that the singer Shawn Mendes (Ontario, 23 years old) would arrive to offer the elegant counterpoint of the appointment.
The Canadian arrived at the Barclays Center in Los Angeles dressed in an ivory cold wool suit with a satin lapel over a tight white shirt, proving that there is always a middle ground between a tuxedo and a drag queen. But the substance of the matter was in who signed the label of his outfit: the Spanish Jaime Álvarez (Seville, 27 years old), founder and creative director of the Mans firm that a few months ago won the Who's On Next award that Vogue awards annually. Spain to a young designer.
"I can't say that I had the slightest idea that our suit was going to end up on the red carpet, because I would be lying," he confesses on the other end of the phone. The only thing this creator, born in 1994 in a town called Louisiana, knew was that Mendes' entourage of stylists wanted a couple of the brand's models. Within hours a handful of suits were flying to California. “They notified us from the communication agency that we have in Paris. We had no certainty if he was going to wear that or any of the suits we sent, and when he had already lost some hope, the miracle happened, ”he recalls.
The word miracle might sound like hyperbole, but being associated with a name like Mendes almost deserves it. The singer-songwriter learned guitar through YouTube videos at the age of 14; months later he dominated her in the versions that he uploaded to the extinct Vine platform and today he is one of those outstanding students of the Justin Bieber school: he accumulates 63 million followers on Instagram and 26 on Twitter. His publications usually attract an average of 20,000 comments (triple if his partner, Camila Cabello, is included) and the image that he himself shared dressed in Mans, specifically, earned him two million of those quoted likes.
The ensemble, inspired by the 1970s with echoes of the Parisian dandy embodied by men like Jacques de Bascher, is an example of the reformed tailoring in which Álvarez has been working since he left the IED in Madrid in 2017. “I have always believed that a A good suit has to stay in the closet for two or three generations, as it happened to me with my grandfather's. He was one of the most elegant men I can remember and he treasured his jackets, which is why I keep a lot of them.”
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It is precisely the first name of his grandfather, Demans, that gave his name to his brand, which has been growing on the 080 catwalk in Barcelona, its counterpart in Madrid, in Milan and in Paris, where it was in June 2020. “ I have deep roots in Spain, but it wouldn't make sense to design for a local audience. Most of our clients are in Asian countries, so I think about how to make a very characteristic design something that has a global reach, and that anyone can like”, adds Álvarez.
His signing joins the list of young Spanish creators who use music to broaden their reach. He is accompanied in this group by the Catalan Archie M. Alled-Martínez, who dressed some of the stops on the Harry Styles tour in 2019 thanks to the insight of his stylist, Harry Lambert, or the renewed Pertegaz, chosen by the singer and actress Zendaya last April. “I don't think it's so much about a famous character wearing something of mine, rather that it makes sense and helps us expand this little world that we've created,” says Álvarez.
In this universe, that of creators who try to renew the European industry through traditional tailoring and freedom of expression and genres, there is also Alejandro Gómez Palomo, the Frenchman Ludovic de Saint Sernin or the Scotsman Charles Jeffrey from his collective firm Loverboy, finalist for the LVMH Prize in 2018 and one of those chosen to receive the BFC Foundation Fashion Fund award arising from the covid-19 crisis.
“I think that we are all united by a feeling of wanting to do things well, or at least in a different way from how this system had been working,” weighs Álvarez, who after the Vogue award and the simplification of his signature –has simplified the name original from Mans Concept Menswear to simply Mans– has been able to secure the structure of his company and the jobs of his small team.
However, he continues to vindicate the craftsmanship that inhabits each of his garments as an antidote to throwaway fashion. “We work with the best raw materials, tremendous attention to detail and an ultimate goal: to create garments that can last for many years,” she announces. “I want to think that one of the best reflections that this year has brought us is that we don't need so much to live: when you can have ten clothes that you want to wear every day, it doesn't make any sense to have 500 things that you hate for the simple fact of accumulate".
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