COLOMBIAN INSPIRATIONS Today based in Paris and fêted for his inclusive, sensual and brightly coloured designs, Esteban Cortázar is currently looking back to his roots with a capsule collection that celebrates Colombia.

I’ve seen haven’t been inclusive and diversified enough. It would be nice if everyone was included, it would make the work easier, people would be richer. I’m reluctant to speak about it, because I’ll only end up sounding very negative. For example, everyone is happy that I’ve done a Paris fashion-week debut, but why is this happening only now? I live in Africa, and I should be allowed to be in those magazines. I tell my friends that I’ve been able to understand Europeans because I’ve lived with them, and maybe they haven’t been able to understand my culture because they haven’t lived with me. Many Africans have been privileged to study fashion in the West, because they love it. One of the reasons I moved to Nigeria is because I thought I wouldn’t get a job, so I had to go back to Africa and create an opportunity for myself. Imagine you’ve lived in Europe all your life, but then you realize you won’t get a chance, and you have to move to Africa. Most magazines need to change the way they work. You can’t be making fashion just for people that look like you. I’m sorry, but I don’t respect any designer who has colluded with that system. If everyone in a magazine or a fashion show is white, do you really expect me to buy it? Many well-known European brands have counterfeits in Africa. That was a new reality I discovered when I moved here. It’s extraordinary how much people cherish these counterfeits. And I find it really rather sad to think that they cherish something which was made by someone who didn’t think about including them. This is why I’m saying that this is a lie. These designers are not my heroes, and they are part of the problem. Not including people from Africa, who spend their money on brands, is to neglect them. As far as I’m concerned, the time for apologies is over. I would never take a role as a head designer and not have people from everywhere around the world in my company. Because having these people in the company is the easiest way to tap into any market I would want to tap into – Africa, Asia... The reason why fashion isn’t beautiful anymore is because it isn’t truthful. I live in Africa, so I’m an African designer, and I live and work in a system that has no support system. You have to do everything on your own. Being so passionate about it, and yet not being included – how does that make you feel?

Interview by Delphine Roche

NUMÉRO: When we last spoke, you told me that your new capsule collection was born out of a desire to do something in Colombia for Colombians. ESTEBAN CORTÁZAR: This collection came out of the project I did with Colette [just before the Parisian concept store Colette closed in 2017, Cortázar took over the whole store for two weeks with a Colombian pop-up shop]. I’ve always been close to my country, inspired by the nature, the people, the colours, the artisanal craft. So when I had the opportunity to celebrate it at Colette, it was very special. A vision was born out of that. What more might I do? How could this become part of my platform? It’s one thing to celebrate your country when you’re abroad, in Paris or New York, but another to spend time there and do something 100% Colombian. So this project started a year ago. It’s a collaboration with a mass-market fashion brand called Éxito that’s been around for many years in Colombia. The initial inspiration was, “Let’s do a project that’s about Colombia, about the talent there, discovering people locally to do it, from a creative standpoint, from an image standpoint, casting…” It was about making this 100% Colombian. Éxito wanted to do a project about athleisure, wellness, a more holistic lifestyle. When I thought about what it means to me, it was more than just exercising and eating healthily. It was about inclusivity, diversity, meditation, dance, contemplation and sustainability – a lot of values that are part of my soul, and which generally are not the message in fashion in general, or if they are only in a marketing kind of way. This was about making it real. How do you make a project that is destined for the masses, but has soul, ethics and authenticity? Something that really connects with the people and goes beyond fashion. How can I help and inspire others? Éxito had never done anything like this before, whether it was making things in a more sustainable manner or using such an inclusive casting with all sorts of body types, sizes, heights, cultures from different parts of Colombia. It felt very liberating to see a big corporation willing to go this far. Being in a niche is easy, but when you act on such a large scale you have a responsibility to change people’s minds about certain judgments. To foster acceptance. I started to see how the project could have that sort of impact, and it inspired me to go further. The prints and the colours are inspired by artisanal techniques, how we make baskets or mochilas [bags traditionally made by the Wayuu people, out of knitted cotton] with these geometric patterns. Also by the beautiful doors, windows and walls that you see in the small villages in Colombia, and their colour combinations. So I said, “Let’s make the colour palette come from that.” It’s not a literal inspiration though – you have to be told the story. So in every single part of the project there’s a part of Colombia – it’s really true that it’s made in Colombia, for Colombians, by Colombians. That might sound rather patriotic… but that was really the purpose. I wanted to reconnect to my country. And get out of the usual system, the fashion bubble, these things that don’t really suit you, but that you have to do in order to be part of the game, to be recognized by the industry. I think it’s a time when we want to connect to our roots, to get back to all the reasons why we love what we do.

You say it’s patriotic, but isn’t it mainly about getting rid of the colonial mindset that makes everything that comes from the

idiosyncratically part of the culture. People said, “We’re more than that.” And I was like, “No, we’re not. This is what we really are. We have all these other things, but these are our origins, which we tend to overlook.” This is a platform, and a responsibility – a chance to change the way we look at our culture, even a little bit.

In the photos, you also staged your models, who have very different body types, in ways that are not conventional. For example, you told me about a girl who lost a leg to the violence in Colombia, and who you had photographed with flowers on her prosthetic leg. She really looks like a goddess in that shot.

Yes, that was the idea. First, she sent me an email a year and a half ago saying she admired me and dreamed of being a model. She’s called Lina, and she’s been practising how to walk with her prosthetic leg, and I felt her energy was so special. I was so moved just thinking of her sitting down to write me that email. So I bookmarked it, thinking I would use it when the time was right – I didn’t want this to sound like some kind of marketing manoeuvre where, because it’s now “cool,” you choose to shoot someone with a disability. When this project happened, I thought this was the right opportunity. She was super happy, she arrived on the shoot with her mother, she was so shy and so sweet, so special, so nice and respectful to everyone. Stephania Yepes was the stylist on the shoot, and she was like a mother to everyone, making sure they all felt special and that we really wanted to celebrate them. She’s the one who had the idea of placing flowers on Lina’s prosthetic leg. We wanted to find a way to shoot Lina without objectifying her, and making this about her story. Of course this is a tragedy, she lost her leg when she was four years old, a victim of violence. But this is past now, and her confidence shows how she has been able to overcome that. With the flowers on her prosthetic leg, this was not about the tragedy she suffered, this was about her. She looks like a goddess in the photo because she became that goddess.

In another photo, two women who look like they come from an indigenous background are sitting facing each other.

These two amazing women are cousins. They come from an artisan community called Embera, and they’re both transgender indigenous women. They make beautiful beaded pieces. When they came to the shoot, they chose what they wanted to wear. Both had extremely strong opinions about everything! So you could see the strength they had to develop in order to protect themselves. They basically styled themselves, choosing the athleticwear part of the collection, which shows off the shapes of their bodies.

The collection is sold primarily in Colombia, since 15 July, right? Yes, first in Colombia, then all over the place and also online, on my website. The prices are super affordable, the equivalent of Uniqlo. But all the pieces are made in Colombia, in five small family-owned factories that employ hundreds of cabezas de familia – heads of families who, in the poor families, are usually women, single moms or working moms. The goal is to support a lot of women in the country. Indeed it’s mostly a women’s project, since very nearly all the seamstresses and pattern-makers are women.