PEPA SALAZAR: REDEFINING FEMININITY

PEPA SALAZAR: REDEFINING FEMININITY

By Laura Martínez

Pepa Salazar (Valencia, 1990) challenges normative femininity and is inspired by the figure of the powerful, self-assured woman. Winner of the most important fashion awards in our country—The Vogue Fashion Fund in 2023—Salazar is interested in playing with technique and making women feel good wearing her garments, beyond what socially means to be sexy. We talked with her about what inspires her, the importance of knowing how to lose, the responsibility that comes with winning, and returning to the runway.

Your designs emanate that search for femininity, to find it with your own approach. Lightweight and well-cut fabrics with a powerful technical background that translates into a very characteristic movement and asymmetry. How would you say this training influences your way of creating?

P.S: I think you’ve described it perfectly. In the end, my work is by and for women, and I think about that a lot when I design. It’s my main inspiration—the shape of the body, how we feel at every moment, what it means to be feminine or not. I really enjoy working on roles. "Sexiness" has always been a label that encompassed a series of things that now have different connotations. Pattern making, geometries, and working in abstract are things I enjoy a lot and are key to my personality as a designer. I’m interested in enhancing the female body, playing with tensions, diagonal drapes, and really engaging with the body; more sartorial work with straight forms bores me a bit.

Feeling comfortable and sexy is part of this change in the fashion paradigm that I find super necessary and very interesting. In the end, it’s about feeling comfortable with your own body without pretending to be something else or going through discomfort for the sake of the garment.

P.S: Totally. For me, it’s tremendously important that what I design fits well, that it lifts you up, and that the garment doesn’t overwhelm you. My best reward is that my designs make every woman who wears them feel incredible. I like to highlight and conceal. I know what cuts look good depending on the type of body you have. I always try the clothes on myself first, and I see it as essential not to sacrifice comfort for the sake of the garment—not worrying about whether something is falling or whether I’m stepping on it. Attitude is very important when dressing, and that’s the power I want to give with my designs: confidence.

And speaking of confidence, that’s the common characteristic shared by Rosalía, Aitana, Caroline Polachek, and even Madonna, international artists for whom you’ve designed custom pieces. What is the first thing you consider when dressing someone specific, and who would you like to dress that you haven’t had the chance to yet?

P.S: When designing for someone, you have to be very empathetic and forget about your ego. You need to consider the message they convey and accompany it with the design. All of them are artists with very strong personalities who stand for many things, and that’s what I take into account the most, besides the fact that I always like to have a connection with that person—on an artistic, professional level. Connecting on some level is important to me. I ask myself a lot about who I would dress... there are so many people I love and admire. Lately, it happens that I’m very focused on music, so it could be anyone! (laughs).

That comfort we talked about makes sense when dressing a singer who doesn’t stop moving on stage. What’s the best part of dressing the singers of the moment?

P.S: The staging. When I see my creations come to life on stage, accompanying the artists with movement, dance... You also have to take many things into account: the lights, the stage, the music... it’s a very different job from a red carpet, for example, which is something more static, although it can also be a performance, like the Met Gala. I really enjoy the music world: the strategies, the image changes... it encompasses many things, many different art forms, and of course, fashion is very much connected.

You’ve won the most prestigious fashion awards in Spain: Samsung Ego with your first collection, Samsung Innovation in 2013, and Mercedes Benz Fashion Talent in 2014, and finally, in 2023, the coveted Vogue Fashion Fund that had been eluding you. I’ve read somewhere that you’re not one to celebrate victories much. Are there weights on Pepa Salazar’s feet?

P.S: Exactly (laughs) always with lead feet. I’ve learned a very important lesson, which is to know how to lose. Losing the Vogue Fashion Fund served me more than winning it. That first defeat helped me truly appreciate winning it last year, and I think I won it when my mental and professional maturity was at the right moment to manage the responsibility it entails. I believe that success and failure should mean the same. Everything is cyclical, especially in fashion.

What’s the most challenging aspect of managing in the fashion world?

P.S: I’d say the runway shows. It’s been a long time since I’ve done one because I used to experience incredible lows afterward. There’s an explosive creative adrenaline, and then a huge drop. I couldn’t handle the comments, whether good or bad; I just wanted to disappear. Since I stopped doing shows, I’ve been much calmer, although I understand that at some point, I’ll have to do it again, from a more prepared place. It’s something they don’t teach you in school... it’s expected that all your collections will be the best, and that’s an added pressure that can do quite a bit of mental harm, at least for me, since I’m very demanding of myself. There’s a thin line between being self-demanding and punishing oneself.

Here in our store in Los Felices, Les Fleurs Store, I saw the Hentai bag from your manga-inspired collection... and I’ve seen many references to anime and Japanese iconography. Where does all this come from?

P.S: I’m very autobiographical; it’s something I enjoy a lot, and I love appropriating codes and making them my own. It’s ironic because the way the Japanese understand sexiness isn’t the most 2024 (laughs), and in the kiss on the bag, you can see the girl grabbing the guy, almost devouring him, and he has a tear falling. I love celebrating that powerful female sexuality. Women are allowed to be sexy, but not sexual, and I love sexual women.