Chilean Fashion Design: Export Talents

When it comes to designer fashion in Chile, our country has quickly become the threshold for export talents, focused on making innovative garments, in lands where the clothing trade has increased in recent times, with an average purchase of between 13 and 50 garments per year, according to ICEX .

Making a living from fashion design is not an easy task, let alone achieving visibility or having diffusion in international editorials, thinking that one of the catalyst elements in this field is to promote the online channel as the main ally of fashion companies that have left installing as operators in international markets.

In a professional career whose essential goal is to forge a path and grow in a market that demands permanent originality, designer fashion is the fusion of clothing that lasts, which promotes sustainability, added to slow fashion, which legitimizes leading the future. of fashion: it is necessary to lay foundations in concepts such as ethics and the recovery and innovation of artisan trades.

Chilean Fashion Design: Who are some of the 2022 Export Talents?

1. Octavio Pizarro

He is a Chilean who has lived in Paris for more than twenty years, and it is in the French capital where the designer acts as ambassador of Latin culture, presenting his collections twice a year, supported by the French Couture Federation. An architect of avant-garde fashion with hints of Gallic traditions, Pizarro has exhibited his talent in such exclusive places as the Palais Royal in Paris and has created pieces such as rustic scarves that have come into the hands of former First Lady Michelle Obama, as a gift from the former First Lady of Chile at the time Cecilia Morel, dabbling in fashion bets for personalities such as Chilean Christiane Endler who wore an outfit of her own, specially made for the 2022 Ballon d'Or award ceremony.

2. Maria Pia Cornejo

This haute couture designer, whose offices/workshop are located in the city of Talca in Chile, studied fashion in Italy at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan and then in Argentina, although it had the greatest impact in 2016 when it was published in the Vogue Latin America magazine, and soon in Vogue UK. In recent years, she has been summoned to various world catwalks, including the Global Fashion Collective, the Style Hunter Milano showroom, New York Fashion Week, a fashion runway at the Refinery Hotel in the Garment District in Manhattan, in Vancouver Fashion Week, always with a view to positioning its author design brands in foreign retail. María Pía Cornejo has specialized in creating clothing lines linked to the signature signature, in geometric designs, 3D figures, with minimalist and sophisticated elements. His new capsule-artistic collection, 'World of Children' (Spring-Summer 2023) hopes to take it to world catwalks, after 3 years without participating in face-to-face events.

3. Gabriel Vielma

At the age of 19 he moved to Spain to study and graduated as an industrial designer, but dissatisfied with this profession he decided to study Basic Design and Technical Drawing and his thesis was to design a leather jacket, which later became part of his fourth fashion collection called Heavy Metal Luxe, inspired by the song Welcome to the Jungle, by Guns N' Roses. Vielma later studied at the prestigious Central Saint Martins College of Arts & Design fashion school (where stars like McQueen and Galliano were born) and to give up his professional practice in Vivienne Westwood's ateliers, because "he was not willing to lose time serving coffee". Vielma works architectural silhouettes, in materials such as silk, organza and body.

4. guido vera

Designer of timeless and minimalist fashion garments based on the precept of simple bets for complex minds. Chilean designer who in 2020 participated in Caravana Americana, which exhibits the best of Latin American design in Mexico, is inspired by the landscapes present in Patagonia. His proposal is simple and minimalist, resulting in unique pieces made using organic/vegan and high-tech fabrics that favor the positive impact of the human footprint. His fashion is based on the concept of dressing the nomads of the new age; he understands nomads as a group of people who do not establish a permanent residence and who are constantly changing, only in this way can they get out of a comfort zone. In 2022, the Chilean designer Guido Vera made his way in Europe, hand in hand with ProChile, in a new edition of the Tranoï fair that took place from September 29 to October 2, 2022.

Other references that have consolidated their international trajectories in 2022 are:

5. Wendy Well

Chilean designer specialized in genderless or non-binary garments. An expert in making smaller-scale costumes, specializing in men's tailoring, more urban collections, and classic-cut dresses, she has dressed local jet-setters, such as Pedro Pascal, in a recent advertisement for a well-known Chilean wine brand, the Chilean gymnast Tomás González for the red carpet of the 2019 Viña del Mar international pageant, and recently the new first lady, Irina Karamanos. In recent times, it has expanded its horizons abroad, with the sale of pieces destined for Hong Kong, for example.

6. Lupe Gajardo

She has dabbled in fashion films, and was the first Chilean designer to appear in a New York Fashion Week (NYFW) show in 2015. The designs of Lupe Gajardo, whose love for haute couture she inherited from her maternal grandmother Inés Galaz Jiménez, insist on the femininity of women, highlighting their silhouette and using luxurious textures and bright colors, or “artisanal luxury” as the artist calls it. Her challenges in her career of more than 10 years, is to position herself in capitals such as Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai and Hong Kong, a desire whose godmother, the Chinese gallery owner Pearl Lamb, a regular at her collections, has inspired her in the search for investors who hope to establish it. by 2025 in the Asian luxury market.

7. Juan Cabezas

He makes a living from his art, molding hats in all materials, including straw creations that he makes to order, as well as giving workshops on headgear. This creator is a native of Maipú, he studied Architecture, although over time he began to work in fashion for magazines and advertisements. Self-taught and disruptive since kindergarten when: instead of painting a gray cat, in a school project he dyed the feline purple. One characteristic that currently inspires Juan is following references such as Alexander McQueen, John Galliano or the king of hats Philip Treacy.

Professionals linked to the fashion business indicate that these designers are opening the path of fashion to new generations internationally, and also to those of us who consume it, thanks to their label: "Export Talents", a group of professionals who Thanks to their perseverance, they have managed to give the Chilean textile industry a place, encouraging conscious consumption.