So it begins
My first memory of clothes having an emotional impact on my life goes back to my kindergarten years, with my mom picking me up wearing outrageous 90s Versace-inspired outfits. Before a life of therapy and derepressing practice, I was a kid that suffered from an extremely severe case of what in Latin America we call “pena ajena”: second-hand embarrassment. People would do things and I would feel the embarrassment as my own to the point of anxiety. It doesn’t come as a surprise then, that every time my mother showed up at my school door wearing puffy fringes with more volume than a Molly Goddard dress and larger-than-life acrylic nails all I wanted to do was to give my hand to any of the other moms with “normal” mom outfits and disappear into a home of “normalcy” where nothing would make me recognisable to others. Maybe being born and raised in Mexico’s catholic idiosyncrasy that condemns flamboyance and values humbleness (not that catholic priests’ outfits are very humble or anything) had something to do with my need to camouflage with the environment, but blending in, going unnoticed, were the goals of my insecure child-self, and clothes were a big crucial part of that.
“What is interesting here, is how from day one of our development as social beings, clothes and body adornment become part of our awareness of how interactions work and how we use them as tools of communication, community and self-representation.”
Now of course, I wish I had the confidence and cultural capital back then to appreciate how cool my mom really was and if I wanted to have children of my own, I would be delighted to embarrass them with my current sense of fashion. What is interesting here, is how from day one of our development as social beings, clothes and body adornment become part of our awareness of how interactions work and how we use them as tools of communication, community and self-representation. Reading the messages sent by people around me through their dressed bodies was always intriguing to me.
Ironically, the idea of Wearers Festival came to me in the naked state in which most of my ideas pop into my head: while I was having a shower. It was the end of the strangest summer of our lives (2020), I had just lost my very loved job in the curatorial team of a prestigious museum in London, and I was going (like millions of other people) through a career crisis. My studies, experience and passions are in the fields of Cultural Management and Fashion Curation, and looking at the gaunt state that the pandemic had reduced the creative industries to, I had to recognise that the chances of getting another curatorial role in a museum in the short-term were just as big as the chances of Trump donating his fortune to fund free medical care. I had to face the very real and scary possibility of a career change and I had no idea where to start. I was crying in the middle of my very own personal festival of self-pity and pretending it was my husband’s cheap shampoo in my eyes that was making me cry when the idea appeared in my head with all of its resounding possibilities. When the industry is not in a condition to let us take part in its platforms of creation, maybe we should just create the platform for ourselves?
“Ironically, the idea of Wearers Festival came to me in the naked state in which most of my ideas pop into my head: while I was having a shower.”
It was only the surface of a shy idea and I spent the following weeks writing about it, but it didn’t take its definitive form until I shared it with Nessa, my co-founder, soul sister and work wife, to whom I partially owe the delicate balance of my sanity during these crazy times. We spent countless afternoons together brainstorming, discussing possibilities and daydreaming about what Wearers Festival could become, and those afternoons gave meaning, light and hope to scary and uncertain days. Our ideas only started to become tangible once we were joined by Adan, Trishna, Leticia and Sofi. They brought a lot of magic, solutions and resources to materialise the concept and bring it to reality, and although we haven’t had a physical meeting as a team yet (we’ve been working remotely for months, bless us) we’ve come to find a safe, warm and friendly creative place on each other during these ridiculous times.
And of course, there’s Jo and Jeff, our wonderful mentors, supporters and cheerleaders who believed in the potential of the project since day one and light our way with their time, resources, experience and contacts on a philanthropic basis, as our appointed Advisory Board. Without Jo and Jeff, we would be blindly navigating the confusing, competitive and merciless landscape of the creative industries in this big city, more lost than a hungry old fox in the middle of King’s Road.
We take off our hats off for all of the incredible creatives, artists and organisations that have accepted to collaborate with us in our upcoming plans. Wearers Festival is designed to exist on the synergy of collaboration and community-building. Anyone with the experience of launching an organisation knows the uncomfortable feeling in your tummy and the lack of sleep that comes with asking people to trust you at the beginning when you don’t yet have anything to show for except your very good idea and lots of hope.
“Wearers is our love letter to all wearers in London and the world as well as our own version of Miranda Priestley’s legendary speech…”
Wearers Festival is the product of our fascination for the unique equations between culture, society, gender, politics, sexuality, economics, environment and spirituality that have as a result people dressing their bodies the way they do in their everyday lives and possibly believing that their sartorial decisions are “random”. Wearers is our love letter to all wearers in London and the world as well as our own version of Miranda Priestley’s legendary speech, dedicated to our conservative uncles and other incredulous who still believe that fashion is nothing but superfluous “stuff”:
“This “stuff”? Oh, okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you.
You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, [that] those lumpy blue [sweater] jeans, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your [back] bottom. But what you don’t know is that [that sweater] those jeans are not just blue, not [turquoise] just fabric, not [lapis] just comfortable things, they’re actually [cerulean] a political piece.
You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in [2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns] the 19th-century jeans were invented as utility wear for miners and labourers in the US. And then I think it was [Yves St Laurent] Hollywood, wasn’t it, who [showed cerulean military jackets?] popularised them as signifiers of rebellion and dissent. And then [cerulean] denim quickly showed up in the collections of [eight different] most designers. Then it filtered down through [the department stores] fast fashion and then trickled on down into some tragic “casual corner” where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, [that blue] those jeans represent millions of dollars, and countless [jobs] cases of modern slavery, the waste of 9.500 litres of water and 34kg of CO2 emissions and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry and the cultural semiotic system when, in fact, you’re wearing the [sweater] jeans that were selected for you by [the people in this room] historical colonialism, wild capitalism and social movements resulting in the current consumption system, from a pile of “stuff.”