. García-Planas is one of the great names in textiles and its factory ARTEXTIL is a legend. How did you get here?
If I go back to my ancestors, it would be in the 16th century, in Olot, in the region of La Garrotxa, making indianas, a type of fabric for clothing but also for dressing the house, which was dyed with the natural dyes of the land. Olot is an area with abundant water, the energy of the time.
As an ARTEXTIL company, I represent the third generation. It was set up by my grandfather in 1929 with a totally vertical industrial process that is unique in Spain, from the freshly shorn wool from the sheep to the finished fabric. I build a unique industrial building (national architecture prize) inspired by the rationalist Bauhaus school. At the same time he also built a neighbourhood of colourful semi-detached houses with gardens, schools, a church and sports facilities for his workers and families. A man with a very high social commitment. Later my father, an industrial engineer who was passionate about machines and technology, expanded the production capacity and the workforce with more than 600 jobs and promoted exports, which came to account for 80% of production. In 1952 my grandfather sent my father to Venezuela, where he built another factory, which curiously is still standing, to address the American markets.
. How did your professional experience begin?
I was never a good student, the first big clash with my father, although I studied Business Studies at ESADE. When I was a child I went to the Swiss School, and when I was 6 years old my father sent me to Germany every summer to learn the language. I dreamed in German. So I spoke 4 languages fluently. My father sent me to travel the world, with a suitcase full of fabric samples that I didn't like at all, but they sold.
My first commercial trip was in 1974 to Hong Kong, an English colony with a great tailoring tradition. I visited their tailors selling cuts of three metres at a time. I spent years travelling around the world, the United States, Canada, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia were my frequent destinations.
Although I never liked sales, I learned to understand the customer and the markets. Stepping on the streets all over the world opened my eyes, because apart from being an ‘aesthete’ I am a very ‘voyeur’ and I perceived that tailoring was going into decline or at least was becoming a residual market and consequently, we had to develop a product more adapted to the ‘pret-à-porter’ which in the 70's was beginning its expansion.
The relationship with my father, with whom I started working in the early 70s, was not easy: a generational clash. I did not share his vision of the product and if we wanted to tackle the men's ‘pret a porter’ market it was necessary to make a qualitative ‘upgrade’ and bring more creativity.
The first piece that revolutionised my bet was designed and manufactured behind my father's back, buying a bale of Cashmere and another of the finest wool from the Australian island of Tasmania to make a fabric of excellent quality but which our salesmen were unable to sell. This was the reason for my first dismissal. Cashmere was too expensive and nonsense for my father, but I had all the knowledge of what was going on in the mature markets, the European ones, and that caused continuous confrontations with him. On my business card, probably with vindictive eagerness, I titled myself as ‘fill del amo’, terminology used at the time to identify the son of the owner, which is what I felt not only ‘de jure’ but also ‘de facto’. It was my second reason for dismissal. Obviously there was no room for both of us, and in 1998 I put to him the inevitable, you or me.
. Very complicated times began with the closure of the mythical Artextil. A very hard process for you.
It was in 1998, and my father and I reached an agreement that he would leave the company at the turn of the century. My surprise was when on 10 January 2000 he was still there, nothing had changed, he was in his office, his meetings, his secretary and his day-to-day life. For me the year began on 1 January, for an engineer it ended on 31 December. I had to hold on for another year, it was his last big ‘move’.
My first big challenge was huge: to approach international markets with a ‘premium’ product that was creative but at the same time had to be competitive.
One month in April 1997, a great shopkeeper, the biggest in the world, told me ‘Planas -that's what he called me-, I don't want to copy you any more. Why don't you copy yourself, cunt!’ I understood the message perfectly and I decided to travel to China without informing my father. I did it in August, taking advantage of my holidays so he wouldn't find out. I traveled from north to south, from east to west, visiting textile factories and finally associating with three of them: one specialised in wool, one in cotton and one in linen. I designed six very specific fabrics, made of different raw materials, all natural, that would have an impact on my clients. I visited my three most important clients, Ralph Lauren and the GAP Group in the USA and Inditex, who at that time neither manufactured in Asia nor were they considering it. I put the six fabrics on the table and asked their opinion.
I did not inform them of their origin, nor did they imagine it, as I had never shown them anything that was not made in Sabadell. Although they were not surprised by their aesthetics as they knew my ‘handwriting’, they were surprised by their excellent quality. When I informed them that they were made in China and that the price was half that made in Spain, they were amazed. They didn't trust China but they trusted me.
China offered many advantages apart from the price: Cashmere comes from the Chinese region of Mongolia, silk was brought by Marcopolo through the mythical ‘silk road’ in the 13th century from China. The discipline of their work and their culture of effort allowed them to quickly acquire a very high level in the production of my fabrics, respecting certain non-negotiable quality standards.
Thus began the most painful process I have had to go through in my professional life. Although I had to wait for my father to retire, at the beginning of 2001 I moved the entire production to China. It was a question of opportunity but above all of subsistence.
My family's social tradition did not allow me to declare myself in bankruptcy or had suspended payment, which is what my lawyers suggested in order to save the family patrimony, but it put the company's workers at the mercy of the horses.
Without being legally obliged to do so, but with a moral obligation, and ignoring the advice of my advisors, we put the family assets at stake and started a traumatic negotiation with the trade unions to agree on fair compensation and thus have a clear conscience.I started to close down the different manufacturing processes in a staggered manner.I lost many of my most renowned clients such as Hermes, Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Armani, Ferragamo, Paul Smith, Dries van Notten or Dolce&Gabanna to give some examples, because they could continue to pay for my fabrics made in Spain, but Artextil could not support a factory designing only for them. I thus began the process of dissolving Artextil.
We responded with the family assets in order to be able to compensate around 200 employees, who were able to access an agreed severance payment instead of receiving crumbs.Although several friends who had gone through similar experiences warned me about it, practically none of the employees thanked us, but I was left with a clear conscience for having respected my grandfather's social legacy, even though I went bankrupt.It was a time of insomnia, a lot of stress and a lot of personal wear and tear.
. Since then you have been involved in textile design and manufacture for third parties and consultancy.
When my production unit Artextil closed down, I started to receive calls from textile industrialists - mostly Italian - who had been my main competitors until then, asking me to design their collections. I decided to take advantage of all my knowledge and set up a design studio, UNITED WEAVERS, to dedicate myself to textile design, which is what I am really passionate about. Today we have two lines of business. The ‘design and manufacture’ for large-scale clients, basically big international brands and retailers, which we do under the umbrella of our brand Artextil, and on the other hand, ‘consultancy’, where we advise textile companies from all over the world, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, Indian and Chinese, always with a common denominator: excellence, both at a creative and qualitative level.
. SILENCIOSA would fit in that very small company point. Why SILENCIOSA?
It was a project that I loved, mainly because it was an attractive initiative promoted by people from outside the fashion sector. For new things to happen you have to think ‘out of the box’ and if you are inside the box it is almost impossible. I had a lot of chemistry with the whole team. It seemed to me something fresh and new in a sector in which I have already known an infinity of projects and I didn't perceive this one contaminated by ‘fashion’, but full of common sense and truth. I'm not interested in fashion.
. Sorry, how... Not interested in fashion?
I've never been interested in fashion, it bores me. If anything, I'm interested in ‘lifestyle’ as a reference for my creative process. As Coco Chanel said, ‘fashion goes out of fashion, style remains’. I am more interested in architecture than in decoration, I am more interested in light than in colour. And as the recently deceased master Miguel Milá used to say ‘You should not impose anything on yourself that you do not feel as your own’.
I can understand fashion as a universe that stages diverse proposals in aesthetics, chromatics or volumetry, to satisfy a market made up of different lifestyles, all of them respectable, by the way.
In any case, I feel conceptually ‘a classic’, because I understand the classic as that which cannot be done better, because as a classic, its essence endures over time.
The great drama of the fashion world began when the big investment funds entered the sector.
The financiers appear and the craftsmen, the trades and the passion for the product disappear. Profitability is automatically prioritised over creativity, materials, aesthetics, beauty and excellence. Everything is subject to the parameters that govern the financial system, which is short-sighted and forgives vulgarity, but where everything is subject to ‘fucking profitability’.
I am no longer fighting to change the world, but I am withdrawing from those areas or environments where I feel uncomfortable, which does not mean that I am looking for comfort zones. I accept it and do my own thing...
I am interested in connecting with people with whom we speak the same language, and there I get very involved. That's how I perceive . SILENCIOSA.
. And then TAKISADA. You were the driving force behind SILENCIOSA's access to work with TAKISADA. Why did you make the match?
I have been working with the Japanese company Takisada for almost thirty years. Japan is a country with a social and architectural configuration made up of small villages and houses. In them, tailors and small workshops thrived, making tailor-made clothes, from tailoring, to work clothes or even kimonos. Takisada, a company more than 160 years old, was born as a supplier of fabrics for this microclimate.
The standards offered by Takisada were those proposed by .Silenciosa: a collection of functional clothing for everyday wear, technical and elegant, with ‘cordura’, thermosealed, bi-stretch or waterproof. I contacted the two companies with which I have a personal and professional bond so that together we could create special pieces such as the ‘Blazer’ or the ‘Long Coat’, where design and functionality meet with impeccable technical fabrics, a sober chromatic range and responsible production quantities. Takisada has a network of artisan workshops, with an exquisite tailoring where to respond to these unique initiatives that propose something fresh and new: A winning alliance.
. Ralph Lauren, Armani, Calvin Klein, Prada. So many years will be enough to write a book.
On one of my first trips to NY I decided to go and meet Ralph Lauren, the symbol of ‘American Lifestyle’, at his offices on Madison Avenue, wearing an impeccable 4-button suit with a ‘chalk stripe’ pinstripe cut by Toni Miro and inspired by my grandfather's suit with an American Mitchel pattern. The receptionist, in a spectacular room, greeted me:
- ‘Good morning, I was coming to see Mr. Ralph Lauren’.
- ‘Very well, do you have an appointment?
- (Her exquisite politeness invited her to smile to avoid laughter).
- ‘Mr. Lauren will not see you without an appointment.’
- ‘Tell him I've come especially from Barcelona to show him my fabrics. I'll only take five minutes and I assure you that you won't regret it’.
- ‘That will be impossible today, Mr. Lauren does not receive without an appointment.’
- I have the whole day off. If you don't mind I'll sit down and you tell him that I'm in no hurry’
She kept smiling; the good thing is that without being pretentious, at that time I looked good, and I think we liked each other...
I sat in an armchair in a beautiful living room with wonderful pictures of Newton, Leibowitz, Lindberg and Testino on the walls. I got up to look at the pictures, and suddenly Mr. Ralph Lauren came in, looked me up and down for a long time and went into his office. A minute later the attractive receptionist's phone rang:
- ‘Mr. Lauren would like to meet you...’
Although I initially sensed that he ‘liked me’, it was my suit that really captivated him. He had his tailor and pattern makers called. I took off my suit to be measured and was subsequently able to open my suitcase with my collection of fabrics. I knew he would like them and he did. From that 21st September 1987, apart from starting a business relationship that is still thriving after 35 years, we became friends.
. Other anecdotes?
On one of my frequent trips to New York, Calvin Klein called me personally. He wanted to see my new fabric collection, which I had already shown to his team a few days earlier but which he wanted to see in person. It was my last day of work in the Big Apple.
- I'm sorry, it's impossible for me to come to see you, I have to catch a plane back to Barcelona in an hour and I can't delay it’.
- Impossible, you can't leave without me seeing your collection in person’.
In 60 minutes a limousine arrived at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue. Waiting inside were Calvin Klein and Stephen Fairchild, his right-hand man, and on the hour-long drive between Park and JFK they were able to enjoy my collection.
About 8 years ago, while I was in a meeting with my team in my studio, an unknown number rang. I answered and without asking who it was I asked him to call me back. After 30 minutes the same number rings again, I pick it up and insist that I am still in the meeting. I write down the name of the person and ask for his mobile number so that I can answer his call.
- I'm sorry, but I never give out my number.
- Well, if you want to talk to me, call me back later because I'm still in a meeting. I was surprised and also annoyed.
Once my meeting was over, I typed the name of the curious character into Google: Kanye West. With all due respect, at my age and because of my very different musical tastes, it was logical that I didn't know who he was.
He wanted to see me, I went to Milan, we had an interview, he wanted to start a fashion line and he was told that I was the best person to advise him on the creative side of fabric development. Without talking about money and as a precondition, he told me that I had to be at his entire disposal to - within 24 hours - come to any meeting that arose in LA to advise him and his creative team. He would provide the plane.
‘I'm sorry I'm not 25 anymore and my time is not for sale’. My answer was very sincere because I cannot betray my three year old granddaughter Berta to whom I dedicate my time in preference to any client.
By the way, when a few years ago, the French Minister of Culture awarded Marithe & Francoise Girbaud the ‘Legion d'honeur’ in Paris, the most prestigious civil decoration that a French citizen can receive, an act to which I had the honour of being invited, in his speech of gratitude to the Minister, Francoise mentioned me as one of his creative supports in his career.
. You live more silently. Where do you find silence amidst all the noise?
It may sound very poetic, but I only find silence when I dream.
In my day to day life I don't manage to find that space, that moment, maybe I'm too active. It is an exercise I have to work on. Silence for me is a dream that I only reach sometimes in my dreams.