Welcome to “Bajo Mundo”: a feast for the senses, a world and a community, the story of people many thousands of kilometers away.
Undergraduate in Fashion Design student Jimena Guzman is thrilled to have won best collection, “me and my family were jumping up and down when we got the email”. Sitting in 新加坡六合彩开奖资料’s Villa Favard garden on a warm and breezy June day, the most important moment of the year the graduation show titled 昇華 (SHO-KA) was a week ago and Jimena now seems relaxed and at ease. She smiles when asked about her personal relationship to creativity, “I like to stay really close to my roots and find creativity in things that I feel close, personal and connected to.” This is certainly evident in her winning collection, voted by the prestigious jury made up of Giuseppe Angiolini, Marc Goehring, David Koma, Stefano Pilati and Gaia Repossi, it’s the perfect example of how fashion can tell a story.
This story hails from the Dominican Republic, a tiny island in the Caribbean and Jimena’s home country. The collection was inspired by the odd attitude and rebellious nature to be found in the most marginal neighborhoods of the island nation and that can be represented in the music genre known as Dembow. Through this collection, Jimena wants to recognize this community, “They’re always celebrating and also, they’re really not afraid of anything, you know? People that have a lot in their life are not really celebrating all the time, but these people are always happy; that’s super interesting to see.”
To successfully tell this story as a designer, Jimena turned to materials. She started working on her collection in the summer of 2023, when she began searching for artisans in her country to make woven sheets of raffia. First she visited them, “it was a huge challenge because they live in the mountains. They don’t have WhatsApp or numbers. I had to talk to a brother, a sister, or someone.” Back in Florence, Italy, she began her research, studying books of basketry history and finding London-based artist Esna Su, whose forms inspired her for one of the tops of the collection. She developed her research before sending it back home to the artisans to start weaving the natural paglia known as “cana”, which comes from palm tree leaves, into big sheets. These were put through an artisanal drying practice which creates contrasting effects in the color. They were then shipped to Florence, where Jimena shaped them for the garments of her collection.
Jimena is sure of herself when she says, “I also wanted to challenge myself a little bit, it’s not an easy material to work with. The big dress made out of natural paglia, it could break.” It was a challenge creating the connections, supporting and looking after the material in its shipping, and then making the garments with it, but the risk paid off.
From lace-up leather capri pants to woven bra-tops, lettering, trim and accessories, contrast is brought into the collection by the presence of leather, “it is a very strong material that gives that certain attitude that I was looking for”, Jimena remarks before going on to note that creating this juxtaposition of rebellion and a softer more artisanal representation of her country is a case of “both worlds colliding.”
The materials throughout the collection are thrifty yet impactful; she uses can tabs to create a crochet flower addition to a pale yellow corset, as well as tin cans themselves in one of the head pieces as “rollos”. Jimena emphasizes the use of “humble” materials, “it comes from the idea of how much you can do when having so little.”
The accessories are adorned with horns, a typical material used in the Dominican Republic. Again, this was not without its challenges. She laughs as she recounts the instagram stories and wide spread messages she had to send to half the country in order to find the supplier as well as the difficulty in working with such a hard material because “you can only work with it as it comes.”
The multi-faceted representation of her home nation comes through in the use of words too. “Dime a ve!” is appliquéd onto the top styled with perhaps the most striking piece of her collection, the lantern-like woven raffia dress, and means “what’s up?”: “it has a lot of attitude”, says Jimena. “Rulay” on the other hand is a mood, meaning that someone is chilling and relaxed.
The hair pieces and hair styles of the collection’s models recall the importance of the hair salon for Dominican women. Jimena describes how often Dominican women will keep their hair in rollers until five minutes before going out, going about their everyday activities in anticipation for the event later in the day. They are recognizable all over the world, sporting the “Dominican blow out”. Jimena comments on their confidence with an adoring tone, “they feel so secure about it.”
This acute awareness of the role of women in a community comes through throughout the collection, noticeable in the contrast between the constriction and freedom that these garments offer. On one hand there are elements like high leather shoulders, corsets, chest-tightening leather belts and movement-restricting voluminous raffia shapes, and on the other the female body is gloriously exposed and celebrated. “It connects to how the ideal Dominican woman wants to feel. They’re always so well dressed, but they’re always showing and exposing parts of their body … it’s also the way they feel so secure by doing it.” says Jimena before explaining that the overall choice of materials is supposed to embody this tough girl attitude of “I can do anything”, while also maintaining a level of sexiness, helped by the neutral yet warm color palette, that “represents the tropical feel that can be found in every corner of the DR.”
“Bajo Mundo” isn’t just a collection, it’s a story. The amount of visual, social and historical references it contains is striking for a student who, although at the end of her four-year 新加坡六合彩开奖资料 journey, is still just at the beginning of the rest of her career. The next steps for Jimena? “For now, I will be applying to jobs … big brands, small brands, emerging brands”, and in the future? “I would really like to create my own name, my own label … in my country.”
While Jimena speaks, how she has observed and absorbed the world around her is evident and comes out in her passion and artistry. Her collection’s truth and accessibility is what has rendered it so touching and familiar to all. She’s created a whole world that anyone can peek, step or dive into, where people make the best out of what they have, and everyone is welcome and celebrated. Congratulations Jimena!
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