2016_02_18_ARQ_musas_jesus_lorenzo

"You can come tomorrow around noon; at that time we'll already be in full swing, but you may find us either very happy or very nervous".

With this sentence with a certain tone of humor, I closed our quotation with the designer from Pamplona and expert in Management of companies in the luxury and fur sector, Jesús Lorenzo (Econ. '98). I needed to witness the creative process, watch them work, listen to their indications, do the exercise of seeing the garments through the eyes of their creator, accompany them and be part of the process in its final phase, 5 days before the fashion show at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Madrid, an activity included in the workshop"Young Fashion Designers" organized around the new Degree in design that the University of Navarra is going to launch next year. The question that had been on my mind for some time and needed to be resolved was about the essence and the process of design: what it is and how it is done.

With these questions and eager to see, listen and learn, we arrived at the atelier that Peletería Groenlandia has at Avenida leave Navarra in Pamplona.

This is a family business , born more than 40 years ago from the hand of the couple formed by José Jesús Lorenzo and María Pilar Morales, both continuers of the saga of a family traditionally linked to the textile world and high furs. This family atmosphere is evident from the moment they welcome us and accompany us to a cozy conference room living room, where they invite us to make ourselves comfortable.

María Fraile, a 4th year student of the CommunicationSchool of the University of Navarra, who is studying the pathway that the center has in fashion, and who is part of the department of Communication of the signature, we guide to the conference room where the Fitting, the adjustment of garments, is being carried out since early in the morning. We arrived at conference room of adjustments, where music from the 90s is playing in the background,"is to set the mood, contextualize, they are also choosing the themes they want to sound during the parade, in which the nonconformist and youthful spirit of the 90s will be the protagonist," explains Maria Fraile. We greet the designer who is immersed in the finishing touches, paying attention to all the details and working with model. We are introduced to Blanca Puebla, the stylist, who comes from Madrid and an assistant who accompanies him, "I have been working with Blanca for three years. The truth is that I did the first collection without a stylist, but it's crazy, you need that support. I've had other stylists before, and I've seen how important it is to form a good tandem and understand each other. With Blanca we have achieved this, there are times when we have different opinions, different approaches, but we coordinate well," confesses Jesús himself.

Under the watchful and experienced eye of María Pilar Morales, his mother, the designer retouches the garments he will decide to show on Monday, February 22, as part of the "Muses of Youth" Autumn-Winter 2016-17 collection at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Madrid, which he is attending for the eighth consecutive year. He composes, test and discards garments, and photographs from the front, from the side and from the back those looks he decides to show, so that on Monday, the day of the fashion show, the outfit looks the same. He looks with his designer's eyes and tries to see from the perspective of the people who will attend the show. "The most important thing is to know how to transmit well; that the public reads well the message that I want to convey with this collection and with these garments".

Between indications, tests and retouching, always to detail, the designer tells us that this year he will present a new project, in which 21 models will exhibit 35 total looks inspired by "my memories and muses of youth". goal "It is the first time that the models will be dressed in total looks by Jesús Lorenzo": combinations of fur wearing mink, fox, astrakhan, lynx... different models in different colors, from the most daring pinks to the brightest whites...all with the aim of bringing fashion in fur to all publics. In the atelier coexist these days proposals that pay tribute to the youth of the sophisticated and elegant woman, prototype of the leather fashion industry, while we find interesting garments for avant-garde and innovative women who inspire this collection. And that wink to the new generations we check it in 3D prints.

 

We visit the workshop, where we see the garments worked by hands whose lines and movements show art, experience, care and precision, pampering, cutting, sewing, each remnant, each piece, each detail, as if it were the most important of the entire collection. We are struck by the prominence of patchwork in various fabrics and prints, and some coats, painted in oil by Jesus' own father, Jose Jesus Lorenzo. One of them, from the first collection presented at Cibeles, is in the Museo del Traje in Madrid.

After almost two intense hours, we said goodbye to the family and the rest of the team, who have an intense workshop ahead of them and their return to Madrid, and we agreed to meet there. We left the atelier with the feeling of having come a little closer to design and having cultivated our gaze a little more.