It could easily be said that this time the central topic was not fashion, although the interviewee was none other than Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada. The fact is that in 2024, the most international Spanish designer on the planet is completely “Argentinized” and he doesn’t stop telling whoever wants to listen that Today our country is “in fashion”. The causes: the soccer team, the success of the series The Manager (of which he declares himself a fan) and the impact that Javier Milei, whom he visited in the Olivos villa, has had in his country.
Ágatha had a very busy schedule in Buenos Aires. She presented her new book (My story), inaugurated an exhibition with her looms and drawings in the Orange Room of the Recoleta Cultural Center (which can be visited to this day) and starred in the opening of Bafweek with a talk with Iván de Pineda (Mercedes Benz Fashion Talk) in the auditorium of the Museum of Fine Arts. In addition, she was named International Fashion Ambassador for BAFA District, a non-profit organization whose godmother is the first lady of Buenos Aires, María Belén Ludueña.
Ágatha’s “Argentinization” reaches surprising extremes. Not only did he take a taxi to the Belgrano neighborhood to see the building where The Manager was recorded (another moment shared online with his followers) but he treasures an audio that Guillermo Francella, the protagonist of the Disney + series, sent him. where he speaks to her like his character: “Hello Ágatha, I hope you recognize my voice. I am Eliseo and I am now in the Canary Islands, in your country, working and eating very deliciously.”
-You deserve a cameo for next season, at least.
-A cameo? (laughs). I haven’t seen the third season yet, but I got Disney+ just to watch The Keeper. The script is wonderful, I admire Francella and the series, which is so Argentine, with that manager who is a genius: intelligent, fast, manipulative, always there, cleaning his goal.
Tireless for Buenos Aires
Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada is 64 years old. She has noble titles of which she does not boast in the slightest and of which she practically does not speak (she is Marchioness of Castelldosríus and Baroness of Santa Pau). Restless and passionate, she built her own path. He studied design and fashion in Barcelonaat 20 he did an internship with the Madrid couturier Pepe Rubio and two years later he already had his own brand.
“My design is conceptual. If we eliminate everything superfluous, we come to the conclusion that fashion must be comfortable: comfortable for the body and mind, comfortable for those who wear it and look at it, and comfortable to make and destroy,” he said in his first interviews. . In addition to clothing, today it sells perfumes, sheets, glasses and household items with its colored hearts.
At the beginning of September she arrived in Buenos Aires with her great friend Carminne Dodero (creator of the Six O’ Clock Tea fashion event and daughter of Marina Dodero, who was Cristina Onassis’s best friend) and her partner Dario Campidoglio. It was a marathon of activities and meetings with people she values and loves: “It is very important to have friends in a country, they are a great key. And here, in Argentina, is Carminne (Dodero), who has always helped me a lot since I came the first time. Now she lives in Madrid, but every time I am here, she organizes everything super. I just spoke with Valeria Mazza. This year we were together in Spain because she was the host of Dancing with the Stars, where she participated, and she has dressed in my clothes, she is a lovely aunt.”
“When the idea of coming to Argentina arose, I thought I would do a show, since I had never been to a fashion week here, but then the possibility of an exhibition arose.: First there was talk of the Museum of Fine Arts, but finally it came to fruition in the Recoleta Cultural Center. I brought my looms (many are from my homes) and my drawings. “I am delighted,” she adds.
-Would you make a series with your life?
-That has to be done very well. Just as I commit to making you a drawing in five minutes because I know how to do it, I wouldn’t like to advance in something I don’t know and for the series to be crap. I wouldn’t like the cameras to follow me all the time or repeat scenes. I can tell you something great or something outrageous now, but if later someone told me to repeat it like a script, I couldn’t do it, I would forget.
-Pero sos natural and histrionic.
-Yes, but I’m not an actress. I remember a series by Valentino, the brilliant Italian couturier. A team of twelve people followed him for six months. The nice thing about the series is that it starts with his dogs on the private plane, everything is wonderful. But he hated the people who filmed him. The series then won the award for best documentary of the year at Cannes and Valentino reconciled with the producers. He went and hugged them. But all day in your house with cameras, recording a thousand times, I don’t see it…
-You are the most international Spaniard in fashion, but you have no heirs.
-It’s very difficult to know why. Young people get tired quickly. In Spain they did a survey about which companies people would most like to work for and Ágatha was number 2. And it’s true that people love working for our brand, but then, when they spend six months making hearts of colors, they can get tired. The good thing about it is that I never get tired, fortunately. You must always have the desire to do, to dream.
Tireless, in Buenos Aires. In addition to the exhibition at the CCR, she gave a talk with Iván de Pineda at Bafweek.-How do you reinvent yourself having such a marked style?
-I reinvent myself all the time. Now, for example, I will do a fashion show in Madrid for the first time with an art director. He is disoriented because I give him freedom. For me it is an exciting game: I will be a spectator. Many people delegate when they leave a company or when someone dies. This time I want to see everything from the outside. That’s reinventing yourself, not always being the same. For this, it is key that the teams are mobile, that the same people do not stay for forty years, that there is a refresh.
The designer does up to 72 shows per year in different parts of the world, from New York and Madrid to the Dominican Republic. But the pandemic forced her to stop and now she is starting to spin the wheel again. “Fashion has changed post-pandemic, but I don’t think I’m still able to say how. Yes, it is more comfy and colorful, as everyone says. I think that this will only be able to be evaluated in a couple of years, maybe six,” she analyzes.
-Did you suffer a lot from the pandemic?
-Well, it was something that changed everything. He had an apartment in New York that was under construction and he couldn’t go. I came to ask myself: “Why do I want it if I can’t travel?”
-What is Ágatha like in a relaxed version, when she is not working?
-Quite similar. I love to read and, when I am very well, I read a lot. When I’m less well, a little less. The truth? I imagine myself always working.
-In the Mirtha Legrand style?
-She is another great Argentine. I have a sensational anecdote with her. The first time I went to her program I couldn’t believe it: those ladies with gloves who brought her flowers! Eating on a television set! I had never seen him before. And a few years ago I came to Buenos Aires to present my line of sheets and Mirtha appeared dressed in fuchsia in tribute to me and with a silk scarf that she had given her at the first lunch I went to. Incredible, how he could remember that, I don’t know. I became a fan of her.
-How do you imagine your future?
-I am in the middle of a change, I just had a granddaughter, I am moving my offices, the brand is always moving. But I think it is impossible to project. I was traveling all year and suddenly the planet closed. I learned my lesson: I don’t make any more plans in my life. w