Asymmetries, draping and allusions to the ‘two thousand’: this is the collection that Pepa Salazar has created for Bershka | Fashion | The USA Print

Pepa Salazar has taken seven months to create her capsule collection for Bershka, a dozen models that are defined by deconstructed patterns, draping and asymmetries, that is, their hallmarks. “We have done everything with great care. I have gone to model, to work on the models of the patterns, to return to modeling on a mannequin, on my body, on that of other girls… because in the end the good thing about this is that I have been able to democratize my process, open it up to different types of bodies”, explains the designer, who has also been in charge of designing the labels, the mannequins and even the decoration of the store. At Bershka they had already launched collaborations with artists, from Bad Gyal to C. Tangana, but it is the first time that a designer has created a collection with the Inditex group signature. «Although in many parts of the world we are not perceived as Spanish, we are a Spanish company, so it was important to make someone national visible. But above all we chose her because there is a bond, a type of girl who feels safe wearing certain clothes,” they say from the brand. “Yes, the Bershka girl has always been kind of young and sexy, but it’s not a traditional sexuality. In 2023, sexy is understood as security in one’s own body, they are garments for people who have things very clear, “says the designer.

Since she debuted with her eponymous firm in 2013, Pepa Salazar’s work has always revolved around patterns (she herself previously trained in tailoring), minimalist pieces with structures that play to fit the body in various ways. «I always say it, maybe because I am a woman I have more empathy dressing other women», she comments, «I don’t like to design from the ego, create a silhouette and impose it. I design on the body and I test absolutely everything on the body, because in the end, the process is what determines how the final product is. These months the Bershka team has suffered », she jokes, «but a centimeter more or less changes everything for me. Also, there is nothing more identifying in a designer than his way of creating the garment”.

The designer Pepa Salazar Photo: Carlos de Lucas

In recent years, Pepa Salazar has dressed various national and international celebrities, although for most she is known as Rosalía’s fetish designer. She created for her and her dancers the garments that the artist used in the Motomami presentation and she, naturally, It was the first to debut the Bershka collection, posting on its networks the tortoiseshell bag that Salazar has created for the brand. A stranger to the traditional circuits of the national industry (she stopped modeling a couple of years ago and has always done so outside of Madrid fashion week), the Valencian creator is about to make the leap to Paris. «Not moving there definitively, for the moment, but coming and going. In the end, if we want to make the leap abroad, we have to be there, it cannot be done from here », she says.

With prices between 50 and one hundred euros, the collection will go on sale today at 9:00 p.m. in a pre-sale after registering through the Bershka app and on Wednesday the 23rd on the brand’s website. From the company they point out that this is the first chapter of a series of collaborations, not yet materialized, in which they would like to value the author’s design. For Pepa, of course, this project is a huge showcase. After a decade betting on a very specific aesthetic and without being seduced by passing trends, it seems that time has proved him right. “And so my aesthetic becomes a bit more real,” he comments, “because my accessibility as a designer is limited. The fact of being able to reach more people is a dream”.