Yolancris discussed free will, co-creation and the arbitrariness of teamwork with Yolanda Pérez, co-founder and creative director of the Firm.

Yolancris – Creating on mannequin has something fortuitous and casual.

Yolanda Pérez – When working on a mannequin, I let my hands guide me and the materials speak to me. Each fabric asks for a different volume, silhouette, pleated, draped, ornamentation. Designing on paper would imply predicting what a piece or collection would look like, once finished. The moulage is intrinsically experimental, going towards the unknown.

Some Yolancris collections are designed based on a concept, they have a storyline, a narrative.

Opera Prima and All the springs of a winter are based on a both conceptual and aesthetic inspiration. But not all Yolancris collections do. Creating is a much deeper process than the pure inspiration and the muses. Yolancris is craft, is trade and hands.

Understanding the artist’s motivations legitimizes their work. What is valued, as in contemporary art, is not the work itself but the idea.

The viewer or consumer wants to know what has motivated the creator to do what they have done. But when a person does an artistic work most of the time has no idea what will come out from there. I think we shouldn’t try to justify or make artists and designers justify themselves and everything they do. Filling with interpretations and layers of meanings things that do not necessarily have them.

The beauty of the spontaneous.

Of the spontaneous and of the teamwork. Many hands and many improvisations from different people, with their different ways of working and their subjectivities, intervene in the creation on mannequin and in the atelier life.

Are all Yolancris pieces co-created?

Mostly. I like the randomness and arbitrariness that this work process generates. There are some constants in the Firm’s narrative, such as the 60s, 70s, Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts, the Mediterranean, the rebel and defiant attitude, but the mastery of the artisans who have been working with me in my atelier for 15 years is the true inspiration for me as creative director and designer.

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