“I am super satisfied with the life I built and with the person I am. I embrace that every day, I claim it every day and I have absolutely nothing to regret. On the contrary,” he says. Evangelina Bomparola during his chat with NEWS.
He has been designing and dressing women of different ages for twenty years and his brand is a benchmark in the exclusive high-end market. She says that she has her feet on the ground and that she develops her business without excessive ambitions. “I have orders from abroad, I could export, but to cover the foreign market as I would like, I would have to have a base in Europe and travel permanently. She is a very big move and I don’t see her for this moment in my life. I prefer to take care of my business here and to make it grow”, she confesses.
She says that she has her feet on the ground and that she develops her business without excessive ambitions. “I have orders from abroad, I could export, but to cover the foreign market as I would like, I would have to have a base in Europe and travel permanently. She is a very big move and I don’t see her for this moment in my life. I prefer to take care of my business here and to make it grow”, she confesses.
She is married to businessman Juan Pons and is the mother of Beltrán (21) and Esmeralda (18). She loves music, literature and art. In her spare time she writes reflections that occur to her and unfinished stories and with the pandemic she rediscovered her homely aspect and her taste for cooking. The years and her therapy gave her a certain wisdom and deep knowledge of herself. Harmony is her word that reflects her very well.
News: What characteristics of yours would you highlight if you had to introduce yourself?
Evangelina Bomparola: I would highlight my honesty, my tenacity, my ambition to improve and learn and to always keep the bar high. Simply that. It is enough.
News: How much does it cost you to be a perfectionist and obsessive? Do you suffer from it?
Bomparola: It’s not hard for me because I’m like thatI don’t know how to do things any other way. Also, I rely on a super team, I couldn’t get to the corner without them. They are twenty years of work and in this period I formed two teams. The first one went to undertake and this second litter is excellent. People who support me, contain me and who have the same vision. No one can survive by my side who does not have the vision to improve day by day. I believe that everything can be better and that things can be done impeccably.
News: How is this moment in your life?
Bomparola: I am in harmony. I have my son at university (he is studying film direction) and my daughter is finishing high school (she is going to study art direction applied to fashion). My husband has his work fine. My house is in harmony, everything works very well, we are very connected, with a very nice family life, very fun. And the work is flowing, going well. I don’t live in the Garden of Eden, but with my team we have incorporated difficulty as a way of working and we try to reverse it daily.
News: You recently presented your latest collection. What is it inspired by? What are your sources?
Bomparola: At work. I am attentive to what happens to me and what is happening around me, I really like working with contexts, everything influences me. In this last collection I wanted to do a performance, a show more than a parade, in the parking lot of the Oceana building, in Puerto Madero, crossed by lights and geometric games made with lines of light. And as for the collection, we did archival work and reverted things that we had already done. In addition, this year I was in Madrid and I spent two days in the Prado Museum going crazy, rediscovering Goya, Velázquez. I went back to listening to Paco de Lucía, Juan Manuel de Falla, and we went with my family to see zarzuela and some tablaos to see flamenco. All that is also included in the collection.
News: How does a brand sustain itself for twenty years in such a complicated country?
Bomparola: I try not to get caught up in anger. If I start to reflect on how much better we could be as a country and the opportunities that we lose, I enter into a negative centrifugal movement that does not allow me to leave. The best thing is to be able to understand what the strengths and weaknesses of each moment are. There is always a plan B. The years give you the wisdom to adjust to each problem and to reinvent yourself in a very crazy country. What happens to us is unusual, it makes no sense. I’m a little disappointed with the system. Everything we use in my brand is imported, because here there are none or the supplies do not have the quality that is required, and the work is totally artisanal, handmade, and there is a lack of people who know how to do it. That is why my goal this year is to find and train new people who are interested in growing and working with their hands.
News: What was the best thing that the years gave you?
Bomparola: Learn from mistakes. I can say it for having years of therapy, suffering with the mistakes and enjoying the successes. I can also tell you that I will never trip over the same stone again. That’s what gave me the most strength. And I believe that when you live the years well, you acquire fabulous wisdom. You learn to read between the lines, to make sense of a lot of things that were previously overlooked, you learn to enjoy much more and live much more in the present. You begin to understand your fragility. But knowing you are vulnerable is a huge strength.
News: Do you like to look in the mirror? What do you see when you look?
Bomparola: Sometimes I suffer with what is happening to me over the years. It is suffering in quotes. I begin to see that the upper eyelid loosens and falls on the eyelashes, that I have a little more dark circles, that it shows if I go to bed late, that the skin is no longer the same. Right away I run that and say, “Okay, I’m 53. What else?” It could be better, it could be worse too. It is what it is. When I start to feel a little insecure in those aspects, I hold onto a lot of the things I do, of the achievements. I cling to a good read, a good movie and in my spare time I really like to write. It does me very well.
News: What do you write?
Bomparola: Things that come to me, reflections. Sometimes, a story that never ends and is left floating there, and, probably, it is the context of a new collection. I write spontaneously, not with a purpose, that’s why it’s good for me.
News: Are you still with music?
Bomparola: Yes, at home next to the light button is the play button, but now it’s a hobby. I don’t sing anymore, only in the shower, I don’t go to workshops or take classes at the moment. But I always listen to music. And since the pandemic I also love cooking and that means putting music to what I’m doing. If it’s Italian food, I can put on an opera, for example. I was caught by a very homely thing that was very hidden, because I always had the enterprising woman, the powerful woman, the one who goes to meetings, gets together with men, discusses budgets. The pandemic put me back in a place where I’m not so Mafalda anymore. She made friends with Susanita, let’s say.
News: How do you see Argentine women in general?
Bomparola: I see different women. A woman fighting to occupy a more important place. I see many women having more and more participation in the workplace, the political, the social, also undertaking. I see very powerful women, very powerful. And, on the other hand, I see women very aware of the image, slaves of eternal youth, little resigned to the passage of time, very objectified by themselves, stuck in a half-weird cliché. It seems to me that there is something like a clash between the modern woman and this older woman.
News: And what do you think of the feminist movements?
Bomparola: When I was a girl I followed the feminist movements, I identified myself, I felt part of them. What I see now is too much violence. I am a dialoguist. The aggression, the insult, the shout, the crude provocation takes away the real meaning of the cause, the sublime meaning that it had at the time, in the sixties. There was a very amazing intellectual line and now this other one that we are seeing I don’t know what it is looking for. But sometimes it is also necessary to make violent demonstrations so that they listen to you. I think of the racial conquest in the United States. One may not agree with the forms, but sometimes that leads to faster results. Likewise, I do not support violence in any of the senses and I would love for there to be a more serious discussion, where the different positions are respected and a dialogue can be held without disqualifying one another. The disqualification of someone who thinks differently bothers me.
News: What do you think of inclusive language?
Bomparola: I totally disagree. Language is language and it has to evolve without impositions. I don’t think it’s the way to achieve absolutely nothing, other than hurting a language as beautiful as Spanish.
News: Are you happy with the life you built and the person you are?
Bomparola: Yes, super satisfied. I embrace that every day, I claim it every day and I have absolutely nothing to regret. On the contrary.
News: Do you have important unfinished business?
Bomparola: At some point I would like to spend a long time abroad, in Florence, for example, and from there move to Rome, Milan, Venice. I’d like New York too, but not when it’s freezing cold. And Madrid drove me crazy, it fascinated me, I would live there. I had been in ’92 and I returned this year, and touring the city I had the feeling that it is the Argentina that we could have been if we hadn’t made so many mistakes. I was very sorry.
