At Bogotá Fashion Week, Home-Grown Talents Put a South American Stamp on Style
Going through the fashion month motions, an editor can’t help but dream of an off-the-beaten-path style destination. Enter Bogotá, a sprawling and colorful mix of new and old. The Colombian capital has long been a pipeline of design talent, from Johanna Ortiz to Esteban Cortázar to Aquazzura’s Edgardo Osorio. Our own editor-in-chief, Nina Garcia, hails from Barranquilla—and when she headed home for the second-ever Bogotá Fashion Week in April, she discovered a wealth of promising newbies.
While the designers’ aesthetics are diverse, color, print, and a sense of regional pride are paramount. Among the standouts: Ana Maria Sarmiento of Flor Amazona and Adriana Santacruz, who both pay tribute to their country’s natural beauty and artisanal traditions. Sarmiento’s gold jewelry is inspired by the Amazon rain forest and ancient architecture; Santacruz partners with weavers in her hometown of Pasto to create her one-of-a-kind ponchos.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, master tailor Faride Ramos’s sleek suiting and menswear-inspired separates caught our attention thanks to her bold use of color and feminine details. Meanwhile, Juan Pablo Socarrás’s embroidered eveningwear and Álvaro Ávila’s ornate baubles had us longing for a suitable fiesta. Watch this space.
This article originally appeared in the August 2018 issue of ELLE.
