Marques' Almeida on how to get a young designer in London

We have already talked about Marques' Almeida, a British brand known for mastering the work with denim.

Interview: Margarita Zubatova Photo: Dmitry Tsyrenshchikov

Fashion editor Rita Zubatova met designers Marta Marquez and Paolo Almeida before showing them at Aurora Fashion Week in St. Petersburg and learned how to make a brand inspired by childhood memories a success.

London is a city that constantly opens up new names for the industry, and there is a lot of competition between them. Such a trivial question - how can a young designer succeed?

Martha: There are a lot of designers in London, but that is why platforms for their support have been formed there. You pass them step by step. We were lucky to study at Central Saint Martins College, the only college that hosts graduate shows during Fashion Week. This gives an impetus to young designers: many professionals come to the show to see who will be next. It was there that Lulu Kennedy came in, who was responsible for the Fashion East platform: during one show they show collections of several young names, where we presented the collection for two seasons. After that, we were noticed by another platform, New Gen, organized by the British Fashion Council and supported by Topshop, - now we are able to do the show separately. All these sites can serve as steps for your development, but first you have to prove that you are doing something special, something that stands out from hundreds of collections of other college graduates. Then you can use all these opportunities to move forward.

And when did you realize that you are ready to leave Fashion East and do the show yourself?

Martha: We realized that we matured two seasons later. Not only the product is important to us, but also the message that it carries, the visual energy. When you do a show with the other three designers, it’s hard to create a special mood. We left to start controlling everything ourselves: what music will be on the show, who will be invited. We needed to make sure that people consider DNA marks not only through clothes, but also through the atmosphere that we create around them.

Let's go back to your first show. It seems that things did not turn out when Dazed Digital was written about you, but after Elena Perminova put on Marques' Almeida clothes. What now has a greater impact on the development of the brand - an article in an influential publication or a snapshot in street style?

Martha: It seems that it is important for young designers that both, but we can say for sure - street style in this plan becomes stronger. When you see fashion photography in a magazine, you admire her, but rather see it as a picture, a beautiful fantasy created by a stylist, makeup artist, photographer, etc. And when you notice how cool this thing looks in real life on street-style heroine , you understand that it is real, it is easy to buy and put on yourself. In our case, the pictures of Marques' Almeida on street style blogs worked more efficiently, and you know, it was so nice to see them. I remember how we stumbled upon a photograph of Helen and could not believe my eyes, because this was our first collection.

Yes, I remember her pictures in a torn jacket and jeans. From that first season, it became clear that denim is the key material in your collections. How did it happen?

Martha: Oh, it began during intensive work in the master's program at Central Saint Martins. You are constantly conducting research, experimenting, trying to figure out who you are and what kind of designer you want to be. We constantly looked at street-style blogs, figuring out what people want to wear today, turned to the i-D and The Face numbers from the 1990s and realized that a T-shirt and a pair of jeans always remained a daily uniform for people. Denim has never gone out of fashion, it has always been associated with street culture. So we had to figure out how we can work with him: paint, boil, bury in the ground.

Paolo: And in fact, with the universal love of denim among young designers, it was not popular to experiment with it in any way; they were engaged only in classic denim brands. Therefore, work with the material has become for us something special.

By the way, what do you think about the giant brands who built the name at work with denim? Levi's, Lee, Wrangler?

Martha: To be honest, we don’t know so much about them, as we work in another field and it was always important for us to break the usual pattern of interaction with this material.

Speaking of patterns: total bows from jeans have always been a very painful topic for fashion, especially in the 2000s. My favorite picture is with Britney and Justin.

Paolo: Oh yes, she is brilliant!

Martha: I remember that we were asked to show our favorite photo in a denim bow, and we chose this one!

Paolo: It's very funny that denim total bows look either as creepy as this one, or they immediately refer you to some kind of 1970s. They are clearly related to time.

And how did you get the idea to break this stereotype - to reinvent the total bow of denim?

Paolo: We just tried to move away from everything that was invented by denim brands before.

Martha: We, for example, have no contrasting stitching anywhere, we generally leave the edges unprocessed. This is again related to our studies at Central Saint Martins. Then we caught a breath of grunge, but tried to “clean” it, make things concise, it’s such a minimalistic grunge.

You know, denim has always been associated with all sorts of music. Ripped jeans and grunge, flared jeans and country. With what music do you personify Marques' Almeida denim?

Paolo: This is a difficult question, it can be any music that is listened to on the streets. At the last show, for example, we had the Skunk Anansie soundtrack - Charlie Big Potato. I can say for sure that what the brand personifies, and what we are listening to are two different things.

What are you listening to?

Martha (laughs): Oh, we have a very different taste. I have a very nostalgic one. I listen to all the Lauryn Hill albums, and this is very old-fashioned, but yes, I love Alanis Morissette. Besides that, I like cool hip-hop from the 1990s.

You grew up in the 1990s, you listen to music from the 1990s, and your clothes refer to grunge ...

Martha: Oh yes, this is such a story of generations. It seems to me that fashion has now shifted towards realism. Phoebe Fileno refers to utility, simple things that accompany a woman every day, because this is something that is close to her. We and the guys who graduated with us, draw inspiration from the most turbulent time - our youth, the 1990s, teenage energy. We do not want to fantasize about what has never happened, we think about what happened to us and our friends: what we wore then, what we liked.

Paolo: The fact is that most of our clients are also of our age - they feel connected with the 1990s, their revival is now - for them something very close, personal.

Martha: Yes, after the show, people approach us and say: "Oh God, these jeans that you made! I was lying in the same drunk on the dance floor in high school!".

Yes, I immediately remembered my childhood when I saw these dresses with floral applications in the summer collection.

Martha: For sure! It turns out that we create design instinctively. He often refers to the memories, old photographs, things found on the top shelves in the closet. This is probably why the 1990s are so important to us.

See, now the 1990s are on the rise, but, as it often happens in fashion, they may soon get bored by everyone. Do you think denim will always be your trademark or something can change?

Martha: As long as we see new opportunities for experimenting with this material, while it inspires us, we will continue to work with it.

Paolo: We started with a simple blue denim, then switched to black and yellow denim, then to denim in a flower, then to camouflage denim, and we understand that this is not the end - there are still so many options that we can think of.

Martha: At the same time, we work with other materials, there were knitted and fur things in our collection, and in no case do we dwell on denim. Just for the time being, it is part of our identity, part of Marques' Almeida, so we cannot leave it halfway through.