The Silent Partners of Style

I’m sure you are all familiar with the term Pronto Moda (Fast Fashion) with it’s roots in Spain’s Inditex (home to fashion retail powerhouses such as Zara, Massimo Dutti and Pull and Bear to name a few) it drives the whole fashion industry with its speed and allows the common people to revolve there wardrobe each season to reflect what is happening in the fashion capitals across the world. COS (Collection of Style) the fashion concept store by H&M is a good example of a megabrand seeking to expand its offer to reflect the growing macrotrend of ‘less is more’ utilitarian design. This gives COS an air of exclusivity and allows its consumers to have a brush with luxury via its almost ready-to-wear attention to detail. In times of economical crisis its been noted that people traditionally seek to purchase items with a longer shelf value, thus a more classic style prevails. Now we see Inditex’s labels starting to incorporate more of these simple and clean-cut styles into their lines as well. What you may not know is that there are many small design studios responsible for delivering these looks into the large retail chains. They are on the top of this trend and are changing the way fast fashion is looked at, they are the silent partners of style.
Last week I had the good fortune to conduct an interview with one of these studios. Paula Delgado and Laura Boldu Holms from Barcelona based design studio Cahier, which is working in Barcelona with international clients that distribute in Europe through big distribution chains are one of the talented companies that help pronto moda (fast fashion) companies offer high style at reasonable prices. Cahier specializes in fashion and textile concepts, trend forecasts, coolhunting, product management, and creative direction and collection development for garment and accessories producers.
First I’d like to know how you both began working in the fashion/textile industry
Laura comes from a family with a very long tradition in textiles, her great grandfather was factory manager at the Colonia Güell (a textile manufacturing estate designed by architect Antoni Gaudi in 1890 and a beacon of social reform and high-tech industrial design in its day) and her father was textile engineer. She started working with him and in the 90′s she opened a weaving mill together with her husband. When the textile industry started disappearing in Spain, she took advantage of her knowledge to start consulting for other producing countries, including Italy, Portugal and Turkey.
Paula, originally born in Argentina, has always been interested in fashion; when she was younger she often spent hours at home sewing garments for herself. So she decided to come to Barcelona to study fashion. Prior to opening her own company she worked for Zara and H&M.
How did you come to work together in this space and how long have you been here?
Laura has been working in the studio since the year 2000, doing consulting and design for fabrics.
We met around 4 years ago through a mutual colleague when Laura was looking for a garment designer for a project in Turkey. Paula at the time had a studio with other colleagues when we started collaborating in this specific project and realized that we communicated well and felt really comfortable working together. After some time and some changes at work, we decided to get together and start Cahier.
 
Who are some of your clients? Where are they based?
We are currently working with many manufacturers, fabrics, garments and accessories. For example we are working with Fantasy Tricot, which is a fabric producer from Italy; Cotton fashion, which is a garment producer from Greece and CEA deri, which is a leather belt producer from Turkey, just to name a few. We have as well collaborated with retailers, such as Tommy Hilfiger, Converse and H&M.

How do you build and strengthen your relationship with your clients?
We try to make as long collaboration as possible with our clients, since we need some time in order to evolve the projects and so the clients can get the most out of them.
From our experience we have learned that we have to work very close with the client, understand what they need and expect, do the job and do a follow up on the results in order to create a real collaboration that is profitable for them. We think that selling one single design or sketch is not good business in a medium/long term, because they are not going to see the results of their investment and we are going to loose the client.

What are you currently working on (each of you) and do you always collaborate?
[Paula answers] Laura is working on 5 fabric collections for PV and I am working on 4 garment and accessories collections. We always collaborate in some way even though there is always one of us following the project. We normally discuss the projects together at the beginning, and support each other in specific things, like when we structure the collections, make color cards and so on. We are always there for support and critique when the other one needs it.
 
Do you collaborate with any other designers and how?
We have a large network of designers specialized in different fields in order to fulfill our clients request. We collaborate with many other designers in fields that we do not manage; denim specialists, print designers, men’s and sportswear designers and technicians whom we have met through our working experiences.

What is your general design process?
The design process is specific for each client, but generally the first stage is to gather information in terms of trends, commercial information from the client and their technical capabilities and the target market. After that we structure the collection, make the designs and deliver the technical sheets. The working methodology and the follow up of the collection and the results are extremely important. We normally travel to the customer’s factory(ies) and do the control process with them, so they can learn from our experience and we can discuss together the next steps to follow according to their business strategy.

Where and how do you investigate your inspiration and incorporate them with trends?
We visit fairs, do shopping in the most important fashion cities in the world, we use specialized web sites for designers, follow blogs and we have a very wide wealth of knowledge of things happening in fashion in the past. We follow the highest brands as well as the most commercial ones in the market. So we get inspiration from almost everywhere.

What trends are you currently looking at and working with?
We are mainly working in a medium high fashion level, and for this segment the most interesting trends at the moment are related to clean cuts and rich fabrics. We can see a lot of structured fabrics, double cloths, rustic or sporty fabrics made with luxury yarns. In terms of garments there is a big minimal trend, as well as sporty technical inspiration turned into an elegant style. Heritage inspired garments are also big trend right now. Clean cuts, loads of bright color contrasts. We feel that simple things/good quality will dominate. We think that people are starting to be conscious about the planet and about sustainability and have realized that using things once and throwing them away is not the path to follow. The time of disposable clothing, we believe, is near to an end.

What is your favorite thing about working in fashion?
Our favorite thing is the challenge of change. Every season is different and that forces us to be very active and learn new things all the time. Other than that we get to travel often thus meeting new people from different cultures all the time, which keeps things exciting.
 
What designers do you admire most and why?
At the moment we think Phoebe Philo is the most complete designer working in terms of trends, novelty and she has a strong commercial point as well. She is doing great at Celine; same as she did when she was at Chloe. Marc Jacobs is very complete as well, he is managing 3 different lines and he does a great job in all of them. In terms of innovation, we think Prada is the most innovative brand together with Marni, whose fabrics are real R&D. We love Dies Van Noten sense of color and prints. And Cavern is the last great surprise, but they are still very young, so we’ll see how they develop. In terms of a commercial brand, we think J.Crew is doing a great job.
 
What lessons have you learned since you began in this industry?
We have learned that fashion is an industry that changes at a great speed, in terms of trends, materials, production places and customer needs. So you have to update yourself all the time, you have to adapt and you have to constantly be working. Projects must be considered structurally, not only on the surface, in order to be successful.

What do you see as the future for this industry, your company and yourselves?
The markets are changing very rapidly as well as the needs of the consumers, for this reason we are working internationally and this is they way we think we should follow.