Algo Bazaar.
July 2020
What is Algo Bazaar?
Algo Bazaar is a vintage clothing archive from the 90’s and middle 00’s.
It’s inevitable to think that your studio has very curious politics and from my personal point of view, really necessary ones. Is there any particular philosophy behind this idea?
It’s a really fetishistic and nostalgic project…We are trying to recover and materialize what for me has been detonating for contemporary fashion. Small pieces that create a global image that gets more consistent as the project makes progress.
Barcelona-based designer Marta M. Soldelavilla has created her own clothing brand Sol dela Villa, through which she expresses her biggest inspirations such as nature, roots, textures, food and feelings. Warmth, elegance, quality and a bit of story.
Vintage Margiela artisanal jeans from FW 1998
Helmut Lang spring 1996 dress with slashed sleeves.
Worn by Kate Moss on the runway show
"We are in a moment where everything is valid, a false creativity between a mix of different elements and fate, achieving to eclipse all the things that are less opulent or flashy".
What could you tell us about the 90’s and 00’s being detonators for contemporary fashion? What do you think they define?
They define a new clothing language, some kind of uniforme which is not casual or formal but extremely sexy. It’s a capacity for reconfiguring the clothing codes, a capacity for reconfiguring what already exists achieving disrupting pieces in their own normality. Helmut Land and Tom Ford are designers that defined these aesthetics “from the office to the club”, something really refined and radically modern. Lots of these pieces are easily unnoticed, because somehow they lack of an apparent design, but when they get in touch with the person who wears them, then it’s really easy to see why are they so special and wanted.
Vivienne Westwood spring 1992 “Salon” high waisted denim trousers with all over print of Wallace Collection salon
You mention Helmut Lang and Tom Ford as incredible designers, which I completely agree and think that they bursted in the industry with a new purpose and message. Who else inspires you?
Miuccia Prada has an increidble inner world, she’s an extremely politics designer who understands the world that surrounds her and presents new and interesting social purposes from an ideological point of view. Her collections have a particular reading that goes beyond fashion. Her Spring 2018 collection is extremley dreamy and full of fairy stamps with Art-Decó references, something really different for Prada, but getting the point of starting a new economic recession, a really dark moment presenting the opposite. Her career puts on doubt the conventional, the good taste into the bad taste trying to rework always the same clothing codes: skirts, undeerwear and corporate dressing.
Miuccia says that she deconstructs an aesthetic resource that she initially hates at all as a premise when starting a new collection, like the stripes at her ss2011 collection. I find that fascinating. Nowadays I observe designers that they are more like stylists, like Alessandro Michele, streetwear like Virgil Abloh or Off white, and some others still working with sewing and textile, like JW Anderson or Pierpaolo Piccioli. What do you think about the scenario we have nowadays?
We are in a moment where everything is valid, a false creativity between a mix of different elements and fate, achieving to eclipse all the things that are less opulent or flashy. Alessandro Michele has worked a lot about the codes that Tom Ford established but they have been dissolved in the pastiche. I think we have experienced a loss of intelligence and ways of working the clothing pieces beyond an opulent or excessive styling. You can separate the pieces and they don’t have any value: they only work as one between them. But there are designers, like Balenciaga, that I really think they appreciate the trajectory and have defined a functional language that is understood by individual pieces, creating new shapes far away from the 80’s pastiche.
There has been a lot of work about the codes and what designers like Margiela or Helmut Lang have done, but I think there is an achievement of a new language and aesthetics that has opened a door to the big change from 2010 and 2020. There is also a big difference between what is getting designed at the studio and what finally arrives at the shop, which at the end is only logo, logo and logo.
Helmut Lang ostrich feather mini crossbody bag
"We are living surrounded by information, and there is a collective nostalgy for all these pieces".
What do you think has happened nowadays for having prestige recovering pieces from prêt-a-porter or old sewing?
We are living surrounded by information, and there is a collective nostalgy for all these pieces. Vintage is now an archive, it achieves to be reaffirmed and not lost in the time. It’s also a movement that creates status if you wear the original, it’s a way of adding fantasy and history.
What is the process of selection of your stock? Do you follow any premise?
From a few months I just wonder if Kim Kardashian would wear it. If the answer is yes, I can automatically buy it. I think she is a person that has redefined the second-hand concept and she has really good taste when choosing pieces and moments.
Vintage Gianni Versace
Maison Martin Margiela FW 2006
Which are your favourite pieces or the ones you value the most from your studio?
All the Margiela archive pieces, which I’ve been chasing for a long time. Every new thing arriving is incredible, the details…Recently a Helmut Lang’s dress, from autumn/winter 95. It’s a transparent nylon and plastic iridescent piece. It’s really simple, short cut, asymmetric, just one tight with a reflective detail. I find fascinating how something so simple can be so modern twenty-five years later.
"I find fascinating how something so simple can be so modern twenty-five years later".
Which are your main goals with Algo Bazaar?
Become as a reference in the vintage world, which everytime has more value.
Which other services or collaborations you have at your studio?
All the pieces can be rent and most of them are already for sale, online and in our showroom.
What kind of achievement related with Sol dela Villa would make you feel fulfilled?
I would like to make a living out of it keeping my beliefs and not having to change a lot to become profitable enough.
Interview by Katrin Vankova