There are people who seem to inhabit their own territory, with a diverse and even eclectic world, which creates meaning while walking. Evangelina Bomparola It is one of them. He has been designing and wearing women of different ages for more than twenty years with their consolidated brand in the high -end market. With the feet on the ground, he develops his business successfully, but without excessive ambitions. Rebel without stridency, as a way of life, his style challenges the ephemeral and the massive.
Without disregarding that sobriety and elegance he shows in his dress, that he goes hand in hand with his way of being. There are no appearances. He is gentle, educated, of soft and loving ways. It seems shy, but it is not. Being exposed put it stealthy, and perhaps because of that, there is an inner warm that is allowed to be discovered. Born in a middle class family of the paternal, with ten years past at the Conservatory, she studied dance, guitar and song. He ended up studying communication sciences in the UCA, worked as a news producer in America until one day the maelstrom gave him the pattern that journalism was not his thing. Fashion appeared then, almost like a return to childhood, to those afternoons in the house of his grandparents where he discovered embroidery and tissue, and became destiny.
Today, at 55, married to businessman Juan Pons and mother of Beltrán (24) and Esmeralda (21), a new facet is encouraged: that of documentary filmmaker. Now with a second installment (“Ode time”) of the series of shorts that, as a screenwriter and director, inaugurated in the winter with “High culture”a chapter that showed a tour of urban counterpoints with the story of Graciela Borges, where the mythical fashion show was transformed into manifesto, crossing poetry and clothing to challenge the Argentine identity. Meanwhile, it is true to a conviction that defines your career: clothes must transcend passing fashions and be the occasion to show yourself as one is.
In his new documentary filmmaker, he is about to present brushstrokes of his next collection with a new installment, this time with the theme of time. An ode to value that waiting moment, to stop. Filmed in the antique and furniture restoration workshops of the interior designer and collector Fernando Samra, the idea is to highlight that praise to slowness.
News: This series of shorts that began with “high culture” to show its winter collection and now comes with an ode at time, to anticipate that of spring-summer, exposed many facets of the designer Evangelina. Who did the direction and scripts of the short?
Evangelina Bomparola: I. I worked with an advertising friend to see how I wanted to articulate the message I wanted to give. And from there many ideas came out, and then “high culture” became a saga. That will continue with other messages. Because Argentina is a world of contradictions. “High culture” is the synthesis of Alto Guiso and Haute Couture. It seemed to me to work with irony. It was my way of saying “enough” to some indifference. Now the second one comes, which is an “ode to time”, the one that escapes us from our hands. All my life I was rebellious, and I kicked a lot of boards. But I was never destructive or self -destructive, they were always acts to go ahead: my most important rebellion act today is to decide to be beyond the context of what is expected of me.
News: And what is expected of you?
Bomparola: Out there that is more obedient. It costs me a lot to define myself as one thing, because I consider myself many. If they ask me if I am 100% fashion designer I would say no. Because first I have my own method. I am self -taught because I did not go through academic training, which I respect a lot, but this is a trade for me, I come from another stick. Maybe that has been upset for some, and I understand, although before I got a little angry, and now it is careless. For me it is also an act of rebellion to express every day what I like to do, as I like to do it and live without blame. My greatest act of rebellion today is to be able to say that dressing well is not sin. Because I hate the double speech where people want to make the politically correct and not dress well because they fear holding, and then they are almost naked at a party. Many people go out with the worst in the square, for not “demonstrating.” It’s not about snobbery: it’s about communicating who you are. Because the first impression that you have the people of you is for how you are dressed.
News: And what is it like to dress in a world of contradictions?
Bomparola: UF, what a question! What happens is that dressing has to do with what you feel. There is no contradiction in dress because, as I live, it is an internal language. It is to join being with the opinion.
News: But you show a way to dress
Bomparola: I have a style. But I don’t give a descent to be elegant. The style that I propose is one that makes personality vibrate or shine much more than to the dress itself. The dress is in the background, it accompanies you, it makes you feel comfortable, and if you feel good the world is yours. When I enter a meeting where I have to negotiate something, I am mounted to the hair, I am powerful, with the bag with very high shoulder pads, and the taco with the foot well anchored. If I want to sell, I have to feel powerful.
News: What gave him the guideline that was going to achieve it?
Bomparola: I never stopped to think about it. Now it must be that because I am great and I spent more for reason and because I became a domestica Ariana, that I can think a little, but always for that kind of thing I was pure impulse, pure intuition.
News: In such a volatile industry, how is it firm in timelessness?
Bomparola: With conviction. I congratulate those who do Fast Fashion, but it’s not my thing. I design thinking about time. I prefer a garment to accompany years before it becomes discharge. In that sense, I feel almost pedagogical: I want to teach that good dress is not sin. The well -understood luxury is an investment, so it has to be timeless.
News: What happens to criticism?
Bomparola: Before I bitter by negative criticism between 100 praise. Today I learned that criticism feeds. It is an opportunity to grow. I learned that it has to humbly be a teaching that I have to incorporate. Over the years I have learned to know who to listen to who to ignore. I am too critical of myself.
News: How do you take with social networks?
Bomparola: I fascinated when they just appeared because they seemed to me that they were a direct link with people without intermediaries. It was great to be able to count an online collection and have feedback immediately. Then I saw that they could become a narcissistic and brutal hell. Today I upload less, I select more. I always prefer the face to face, the real talk.
News: How is it to discharge in this world of Alto Guiso?
Bomparola: (Laughs) I make fashion. The Argentines were dealing between storms and hostile terrain. I make fashion. We never know if there are invisible closures. Do you know what it was to put a Chinese closure, and that the dress is broken in the middle of the party or when they went to the bathroom? But those are the things that happen in our country. Having dismantled the textile industry. My grandmother sewed, and I accompanied her to buy what she needed. Here everything was done from buttons to the cloths. Almost nothing imported. Today we are an assembly industry.
News: He has dressed at first ladies, influential women. How do you handle the relationship between politics and fashion?
Bomparola: Naturally. Juliana Awada is my friend, Fabiola Yáñez was client. I always say that an entrepreneur must be, in some way, official: we must support so that the country does well. You cannot on the side of the maker put sticks on the wheel. Yes you can issue an opinion, but I also believe that our industry would be much stronger if we run from the ego.
News: Did you ever say “no” to someone?
Bomparola: I do not bank for the rude people. When someone ever does not treat my people well or me, I decide not to work with that person. It is one of my greatest achievements, to be able to choose who I work for.
News: A slope?
Bomparola: Sing in public. I have scenic panic, but I would love it. I think that taking out the voice is a bit to undress you, and I began to preserve my intimacy a lot following certain things that happened to expose me a lot. I would love to make the costume of a movie. It happens to me with Argentine cinema that I see that the costumes rarely accompany the character. Many directors believe that clothes do not speak.
News: Where do you see your brand in ten years?
Bomparola: I would like you to transcend borders, but from here. Let them come to look for me. I have a life here.
News: What is the message of your fashion?
Bomparola: Very simple: do not miss the opportunity to show the world who you are.
