Area CG’s Fernando Rius says luxury is not about buying something costly, it is about understanding the tradition, historical past, and time invested

Reading “A Career in Fashion,” the autobiography of the celebrated Bill Cunningham (printed in Spanish by Editorial Superflua), fills the reader with a wholesome envy. There are figures who hint astonishing character arcs with their lives and appear to dwell a couple of life. Cunningham was a milliner, a younger salesman in a New York division retailer, a columnist for Women’s Wear Daily and, in the last stage of his life- the one which launched him to stardom on social media- a street-style photographer famed for criss-crossing the Big Apple on his bicycle in his blue jacket. The lifetime of Fernando Rius, who based the company Area Comunicación Global in 1995, has something of the identical high quality.

A dialog with Rius and a easy query (“how did you get started in this?”) is sufficient to grasp that he has additionally lived many lives. He was concerned in the launch and growth of Cabás, which could possibly be described as Madrid’s first “concept store,” stocking items by Issey Miyake, Azzedine Alaïa, Francis Montesinos, and Adolfo Domínguez. He was buying director at Loewe, working alongside Enrique Loewe, and, in Vogue Spain’s early years, he wrote runway stories and designer interviews for the title.

Three a long time in the past, Fernando Rius formed a communications company which, with out abandoning its household character and boutique spirit, has established itself past Spain’s borders, with a staff of fifty individuals and workplaces in Mexico City and Lisbon, along with Madrid. As the company marks its thirtieth anniversary, having specialised in the luxury section since its inception, FashionCommunity.com talks to its founder about the previous, current, and way forward for the sector.

FNW: How did you give you the concept of making a communications company at a time when this idea hardly existed in Spain?

Fernando Rios: When I discovered myself in want of reinvention, I realised that I had very complete expertise, from dressing a window to heading a model’s buying, doing trunk exhibits, writing for {a magazine}, producing trend shoots… I knew the complete course of, from the conception of a cloth to its sale, together with the creation of need by a publication. That had been my expertise for 18 years and the logical subsequent step was to arrange a consultancy. All this has taken form over 30 years to create what Area is at the moment. In the early days, I didn’t have the readability or imaginative and prescient I’ve now.

FNW: And how did your first purchasers come?

F. R.: Someone spoke about me in Italy. I had glorious contacts from my time at Condé Nast, and a staff in Italy requested whether or not I might deal with communications for his or her model. At the time, I wasn’t completely certain what they had been asking of me, however I mentioned sure. That model was Tod’s, and it was my first consumer, together with Calvin Klein, which was coming into a brand new chapter. They requested me to organise an occasion in Madrid for the opening of their boutique on Ortega y Gasset, with Kate Moss as the particular visitor.

I launched the company with these two purchasers, plus consultancy for Loewe and for Zegna. I labored with a Spanish designer named Roberto Verino, and with one other—Roberto Torretta—who had not but launched his model; I started advising him, and two years later he took to the Cibeles runway. Then got here the CityTime group, Ralph Lauren, Gucci, and Burberry. Over the years, the company has grown round the trend sector, and additionally life-style.

FNW: How have you ever managed to remain targeted amid this progress?

F. R.: We have had fascinating purchasers, from 30-year-old premium spirits to music bins that take a 12 months to make and value as a lot as a aircraft. We’ve dealt with manufacturers, merchandise and tasks which have given us a novel inside view of luxury. We have labored with main homes, however at all times in very shut, virtually family-like settings, the place we’ve got been capable of interact in very direct dialogue with the manufacturers and their creators.

This has given us a really privileged perception as a result of we’ve got skilled true luxury. Luxury is not buying something costly; it is understanding the tradition, the historical past, the time that lies behind every product.

FNW: In the final 30 years the world of communication has modified so much, largely because of (or due to) know-how. How do you get together with it?

F. R.: We have at all times tried to be very according to the ideas that led me to create the company. We go hand in hand with know-how, however we do not let it dominate us. We embrace the new: we’ve got had an workplace in the metaverse for 3 years; we did a “press day” with augmented actuality in the center of the pandemic as a result of we wished to permit journalists, who had been at dwelling, to take a virtual- however virtually physical- journey to our workplaces and to the world that had shut down at that time: the catwalk exhibits, the showrooms, and journey. Now, after all, we use synthetic intelligence, however with an inside code of ethics that the staff has to respect. What we can not do is permit synthetic intelligence to supplant the human mind and our capability to think- and to make errors.

FNW: Historically, Spain has not been a giant marketplace for luxury. What is it prefer to work in the sector on this nation?

F. R.: Spain is now much more attention-grabbing than earlier than attributable to geographic, social, cultural, and financial shifts. There are individuals coming to take a position, however Spain has by no means been a rustic that has contributed in any radical technique to the progress of the huge manufacturers. We do our bit, however we’re not China, the United Kingdom or the United States. That offers you a really particular perspective since you study to dwell together with your actuality: we’ve got to carry our personal towards the United States and all the huge European- and, after all, Asian- capitals when it involves outcomes or delivering what is requested of us. But we work for a market that represents a really small proportion of the revenues of the huge companies. That teaches you to be tremendously dynamic, environment friendly, and aggressive with lean buildings. And it forces you to study to outlive, however above all to be inventive in a state of, let’s consider, everlasting disaster.

FNW: If we discuss about crises, in the final three a long time the sector and the economic system have gone by a couple of. How have you ever navigated them?

F. R.: Area has to date survived the September 11 assaults, the fall of Lehman Brothers, and Covid, which doesn’t imply there couldn’t be a crash tomorrow that wipes us out. I imply we’ve got survived all that by adapting and being enormously versatile. It is true that, in 2014, I started to significantly think about that Area wanted to diversify danger and I realised that I couldn’t increase both into the United States or additional inside Europe as a result of my purchasers had been all European or North American. I might see that a few of our purchasers already wished to enter Latin America, so in 2014 I went to Mexico, started exploring the market and, after numerous twists and turns, we opened a subsidiary that has now been working for 11 years.

Mexico is a really dynamic market. And Mexico retains you humble: once you assume you’ve achieved something, you return to sq. one and have to start out over again. It has been a fully fascinating expertise and, to be very trustworthy, it is what allowed us to outlive occasions as onerous as the Covid pandemic in 2020. We even have a small workplace in Portugal that we use to triangulate Iberia with Latin America.

FNW: With your expertise and knowledgeable eye, how do you see the present scenario of trend and its close to future?

F. R.: The way forward for trend lies in restoring primacy to those that have the expertise and in accepting that the mass market is a battlefield, however it should as soon as once more be nourished by the inventive concepts of those that actually take the danger, day in and time out, of placing a wild concept on the desk. I feel trend has to return to dressing “immense minorities.” I feel the sector is going to expertise an attention-grabbing catharsis in the coming years; the huge teams will discover themselves needing to start out divesting not of loss-making manufacturers, however of manufacturers they can’t, or do not know the right way to, handle. And we’ve got to provide the energy again to the creator, to the one who actually has the concepts, and allow them to develop these concepts.

FNW: How do you envisage the subsequent a long time for Area?

F. R.: Growing steadily, in search of synergies, however at all times retaining two issues: the household setting and a small construction. My motto is “think small” as a result of, when you assume small, you’ll create on a grand scale. I see Area, greater than ever, as a human, humanist venture, the place know-how can solely be at the service of creativity and not the different means spherical. Obviously, I hope Area will outlive me, and that is the future I would really like it to have.