The summer dresses that will see you into autumn
Ever thought about mixing work and pleasure? Meet the couples living in each other’s pockets – and designing them
Marga Massanet and Jacobo Cobián of Masscob speak to Victoria Moss
Marga Massanet and Jacobo Cobián have been married since 2006, and their relationship is shot through with serendipity.
They hail from La Coruña in Northern Spain, and met in their early 20s. They had both studied law at university but never practised, instead choosing to pursue creative fields after graduation. Cobián headed to LA to study photography, while Massanet came to London. They met on a flight from Madrid back home to La Coruña, discovering they had friends and passions in common.
“Within a month of meeting we decided to go to London together and study short courses in design at St Martins” remembers Cobián, 42. Here they started planning a collection and, when they returned to Spain, they decided to create it for real, officially launching in 2003.
“We never planned to do a brand.” he says. “It was spontaneous, but once we started working on it, it all happened very quickly.”
They showed their first pieces at some small boutiques in Madrid and Barcelona and had a strong reaction, “so we thought we better start the company” laughs Massanet, 41.
The core idea was to create everything close to home (some pieces are sent to India for embroidery, but for large part it is all made in Spain and Portugal), and work with natural fabrics to create pieces that they describe as “sophisticated but a little rustic, classic shapes with interesting details”. “We never follow the fashion thing” says Cobián. “We like to create pieces that are long-lasting. They all have something of the past about them, but with a modern touch.”
Some of the pieces hark back to Massanet’s childhood and trips to the dressmaker and fabric markets with her mother, watching her painstakingly construct her clothes.
“There is a velvet dress in this spring collection (on sale, masscob. com) which reminds me of a dress my mother made when I was young,” she says. “I love bringing back those memories.”
They work on the brand simultaneously. “We choose the fabrics and colours together at the start,” says Cobián. “We always begin with fabrics. Then Marga will start the design, and I might finish it, or vice versa. We both like to be involved in the design phase. I can be more spontaneous and act in the moment. Marga is more organised…”
Massanet interjects: “When a man is spontaneous you need an organised woman!” “We complement each other,” says Cobián. The couple have two children, Jacobo, 9 and Carlota, 7, and are still based – with their design studio – in La Coruña, and spend summers in Formentera or Majorca – it sounds idyllic.
“It’s difficult to not talk about work at home, but the children do help distract us. We try to keep conversation to the nice side of things, like building a collection, rather than the problems.” They admit to needing space sometimes though. “We often come to the office in different cars, we need our music and alone time” laughs Massanet. Cobián describes the label as “a personal project. It’s our life.”
“We built it step by step” follows Massanet, “I couldn’t do it on my own.”
Her husband agrees: “I need Marga. It’s a lot of work and pressure and we are a strong partnership. We’ve never had a big plan, we do it because we love it. We just think about building the next collection and enjoying it.”
Álvaro González and Nick Vinson of Álvaro speak to Caroline Leaper
When Álvaro González and Nick Vinson threw the fashion wedding of the year in August 2013, they had no idea that it would result in them becoming partners in business as well as in life. “We invited 100 people to come to Laudomia Pucci’s [daughter of Italian fashion designer Emilio] estate outside of Florence, and the dress code was Le Smoking and sandals,” says Vinson, who now serves as a co-founder and branding director at the pair’s footwear label, Álvaro. “We wanted to give everyone a present when they arrived and thought, let’s make some sandals.”
Before this point, González had been an accessories design director at luxury houses including Jimmy Choo and Valentino, while Vinson was a creative consultant with an interiors column in Wallpaper magazine. A mutual friend set them up in Bali in 2003, and soon they were living and working between Florence and London. González had previously experimented with a capsule collection of four men’s sandal styles, made for Mr Porter, but after the nuptials, their women’s line exploded.
“Fifty per cent of our guests were women, so I made my first women’s style – the idea came really because we knew that the girls couldn’t wear heels or they would destroy Laudomia’s garden,” González laughs.
A week after the wedding, Caroline Issa and a handful of other fashion editor guests were photographed wearing their sandals again on the streets of New York Fashion Week, “and suddenly everyone knew about the sandals,” González says. “The next thing we knew, Colette and Net-aporter wanted to order them, so by the following January we had the first women’s collection ready.”
The decision to officially launch a business wasn’t
an instant one – González admits that he was only ever interested in creating great products, and that without Vinson’s marketing expertise, Álvaro the label would never have happened.
“I never wanted my own brand. I love to be in Florence in the factories, developing things,” he admits. “Nick took care of the graphics, packaging and photography, and it was only then, with his vision, that it looked possible to me.”
Developing their first store in Marylebone together at the start of this year was a chance to communicate a little more about who they are as a couple, as well as a brand. “You walk into the store, and it’s our world,” says Nick. “All the furniture is quite eclectic; these are pieces that we’ve collected on our travels.”
“We respect each other’s taste – we don’t agree on everything, but that makes things better as it makes you think twice,” says González of their working dynamic. “If it’s a really good idea, you’ll fight for it and convince the other person. If it’s not so great then you’ll let it go and come up with something better – together.”
Tiffany and Sion Phillips of URIBE speak to Emily Cronin
A Hallowe’en party may not seem the place to find lasting love, but it worked for Sion and Tiffany Hargraves Phillips.
Tiffany, then Tiffany Hargraves Uribe, and Sion had met once before, at a dinner party in Paris, but it wasn’t until their paths crossed at Dazed Media’s annual Tinaween costume bash in 2010 (she wore full geisha regalia, he didn’t really “do” fancy dress) that something clicked. “Ever since then we’ve been pretty much inseparable,” says Tiffany. At the time, Tiffany, now 35, worked as a designer in the Chanel studio in Paris; Sion, 37 and an art director, had just returned to London after a sabbatical spent, in part, managing construction projects in Afghanistan.
They moved in together before marrying in September 2012, then embarked on a three-month honeymoon – a road trip from Northern California to Peru. “It was the best trip we’d ever done,” Tiffany says, and as they travelled, the idea to start their own studio took hold.
“We always knew we wanted to do something together, and accessories seemed like a good idea because they’d use both our skill sets,” Sion says.
They chose the name Uribe, the part of her unmarried name Tiffany had dropped after their wedding. “Calling the brand Uribe was a sentimental way to keep the name going for me, and Sion liked the visual symmetry of it.”
Aesthetically, Sion loves clean lines and a modern, graphic sensibility. Tiffany calls herself “the eccentric hippie of the pair.” They set out to create “something super-chic and modern, but playful and feminine,” with nods to the Memphis design movement.
Their first collection, in 2014, consisted of rings, earrings, bracelets and necklaces in mixed metals and colourful semi-precious stones – each striking, sculptural and original. They start on each collection together, defining a theme and
collaborating on moodboards. Then they split – Tiffany designs the collection and Sion works on shoots and visual ideas. “We stick to our departments, but every major decision is taken together, and if one of us isn’t happy we find another way,” Tiffany says.
Their well-established design rhythms changed with the arrival of baby Afon, now seven months old. He’s a fixture in the studio and chortles throughout the interview. “Becoming parents, you learn to really manage your time. Nothing goes on the back burner anymore.”
It helps that they have strong models in their parents: Tiffany’s father is a dentist and her mother manages his office; Sion’s dad owns a construction company and his mum runs the business. “So when we met and fell in love, if felt like the obvious decision – of course we should start a business. Even if we decide to just make coffee, let’s do something together.”
Not that it’s always easy. “She’s really messy in the office,” Sion says. “Oh, I am not!” Tiffany protests. “I have organised stacks of paper and it drives him mad. And Sion has really bad email habits. But you learn to love those things about each other.”
Both say that they wouldn’t want to start a business with anyone else. “What’s good for me is this real sense of honesty,” Sion says. “There are only a few people I’ve ever worked with I can be totally honest with, but this is a true partnership, a true mixture of both of our ideas.”
“I remember at the beginning, I thought it was so amazing that we could sit in bed talking at 11 or 12 at night, and come up with an idea, and not have to put it in an email, or get it validated, or check with the boss,” Tiffany says. “It’s a feeling of having no limit.”