Hi Gustavo, I had the chance to have you as a lecturer in coolhunting at CENTRO University, I have followed your career in fashion and design. I’ve never asked…
What was your first approach with fashion?In the decade of 1980’s the epicenter of counterculture in Mexico was Bar 9, that with Vertigo magazine gave place to an imaginary on art, fashion and design. Different of what television imposed us. Even if it was very disruptive it worked, of course it worked it was a reflection of what was happening in London and in the magazines like Blitz, The Face. It was the origin of style, of this movement it would emerge Leigh Bowery, etc. In the proper 9 there was a night that was called “Playing London”. I was in that time in the world of art but in reality I liked appearances, not the contents.
What is that makes you passionate about fashion and trends? I am not passionate about fashion. I am passionate about consumerism, and how it adapts to the needs of every region of the country.
How do you come across with the idea of creating TRENDO, a trend agency unique in it’s type in Mexico? The world of fashion knows that in order to sell it has to make forecasting of what people want to buy, prospective of futures. Having this in context I started to research not trends, but the vision of world trend’s agencies. At the same time visions of the futures emerged like the trans humans and Kurzweil which were talking on how it the society would evolve after the machines would recover consciousness. I studied culture as a major, the cultural analysis, the prediction of behavior, the conviction of Mextilo , that Mexico is not Europe and not United States and it never will be. I were what it added to create a unique agency of trends of this type in Mexico.
How do you work with your team on trend forecasting?I have a team of a 100% generation Z, which allows me to see with a fresh young vision, the world of design, the trends and consumerism. We are everyday nurturing ourselves, but not like foreign agencies that only take as referents high fashion designers, or like national agencies who are ultra hiper woke, we review everything. From what the base of the pyramid consumes, the different generations and the different regions of our country.
On these time of COVID, What is the forecast we will face in fashion, design and the way we consume it?The people who feel very woke say: Enough with consumerism!, Enough of fast fashion!, Conscious Consumerism!, but the reality is that our country is far less to get to those extremes. The average Mexican doesn’t conceive an idea of fashion. Survives, and the form on which it dresses is merely functional, with a reduce vision of style. The designers always have vanguard designs at exorbitant prices, but it what we want is to consolidate the industry of fashion, realistically, economically functional we must land the proposals of wearable design and the price is the basis of the pyramid.
In this moment that we see digital with so much more impulse than before, do you think that Mexican brands can subsist with online sales? Hardly, the shipping sometimes result much more expensive than the product it’s self, and to send by Mexpost is imposible. Mexico doesn’t have the infrastructure that is necessary for this type of commerce. The informal commerce has managed to survive through an e-commerce which is more primitive. The sell through Whatsapp, Facebook and other social media.
What do you consider that mexican brands need in order to position themselves in the market? Have an idea of identity that doesn’t fall in folklore, or costume. To sell at realistic pricing, because the wage salary in Mexico it less than 8 thousand pesos. Live the design of vanguard in order to sell things that are really mainstream.
Which are the trends we will see stronger in fashion in our country in 2021?
Deconstructed garments: more than recycling,brands and authors will follow designers of vanguard like Gosha Rubichinsky and Demna Gvasalia who cut and pasted randomly to create interesting patterns. In 2021 this type of garments will be produced in a massive way by big corporations of fast fashion.
Postponed idealisms: Without a doubt the trends we will see the most next year. The 2021 is a year to survive, the mass of jobless, the fall of PIB will provoke the move of the middle class to the basis of the social pyramid. Consumerism will maintain but only at very low prices and massive creations. The dream that came with the last years of conscious and artisanal fashion will give place of the consumption of assets of survival, in a year of austerity cotton shirts of $2,000 pesos (it sounds crazy in a country where average wage is $7,800. In 2021 and in 2022 there will still be a growth for retail national massive brands.
A happy colorful palette: It may seem that in times of uncertainty the immediate answer the world of fashion would get to a point of sad colors, however and infinity of brands like Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Isabel Marant, even Balmain presented their 2021 collections a chromatic happy palette, full of life and that inspires happiness. It is necessary to cheer a world under reconstruction.
The reinvention of the basics: We spent all the 2020 in pj’s, what’s next? The spirit of comfort of what we are used to across the year will continue in 2021.
Plastic Shoes:From the root of the pandemic, it emerged a collective need of sanitize everything of which we are in contact with. Naturally, our shoes while they are in direct contact with infinity surfaces became on potential carriers of the disease putting in factor a risk in our health.
Hybrid footwear: In 2020 enormous drop was registered in the sale of formal footwear. And how not? Working from home and having nowhere to go, the need of having wearable garments is less present. The exit of formal footwear gives pace to the arrival of hybrid footwear, combining sporty elements, and the formal in a new category of modern and functional footwear, after many quarantines likely we think on clothes once more.
Disco is back: It may be in platform shoes that scream Studio 54, o garments with flares and rhinestones that reminds us of the 70’s, everything that is making a comeback in 2021. It is a trend that comes from the world of music, as a revival of disco in an international way.
What does our country need in order to keep consolidating the fashion industry?
The industry is consolidated,130 million of Mexicans are dressed. Author Design is not a business and it will never be. And sustainable fashion brands basically is the All-Bran of fashion. Is it healthy? Yes, do you buy for health? Yes, tastes good? No
In your house you munch frootloops. The same thing happens with fashion, everything that Lee Edellkort will work in Amsterdam, but won’t apply in a society like Mexico. We barely enter middle class popular consumerism, there is no hyper-consumerism and we are not in the place of saving the world because in Mexico we need to save our families. The industry is selling to the basis of the pyramid, viewing with a caring smile the madness of runways and passion devolution.