10 Questions with Paula Fernández López

Paula Ferlo is a Spanish designer, born in Seville in 2002. Her whole life has been involved in Art since she was a child, being involved by her grandpa, who was an artist in painting.

She used to illustrate landscapes, still lives, and portraits, until sketches reached her. She loved to show her interest in fashion design through them. Nowadays, she is still keen on fashion illustration.
Paula's works of art focus on the creative process's conceptual basis. It allows one to get a free interpretation of her designs, which norms and standards show very clearly and identify aesthetics.

Paula started studying fashion design in 2020. From then on, she has been looking for her own style just to approach their works to herself in order to fill them with her own essence.

Ripped textures, a short neutral color palette, and an avant-garde style are the main elements that make her different and define her as an artist.

@paulaferlo_

ARTIST STATEMENT

“When trying to create, I look beyond the main idea and its story. I turn the brainstorming into a single concept and work on it, setting those codes and shapes through which I want to show my point of view.

Indeed, I don’t produce practical or functional pieces, but why should I? By chance, isn’t fashion an artistic expression? A piece of art can also be thought of and created to be exposed, not to be worn.

Handmade textile manipulation helps to strengthen the garment through the production of different textures, adding value to the design — heartrending, earthy, stabbing, organic, wrinkled, weak, fluffy, rigid, cruel, tough, well-being, or tiresome.

All these concepts or ideas are stacked in a single work of art, giving it a sole and balanced meaning.” — Paula Fernández López

INTERVIEW

First of all, introduce yourself to our readers. Who are you, and how did you start experimenting with art?

I'm Paula, I'm 20 years old, and I'm currently a Fashion Design student. I live in a small town in Seville with my family and friends. There, I started drawing in some painting classes they taught near the church. He was a friend of my grandfather, a painter from my town. They were both partners because they shared a profession. I was about five or six years old. The first thing my mother did was buy me a drawing blog, and after practicing class after class, I painted my first painting on a wooden tablet with some pastel chalks. It was about a little donkey, an illustration that I saw once and captured on that board, which my grandparents lovingly framed. Today, it still hangs in his house.

You have been practicing art from a very young age. Do you remember when you decided to turn this passion into a proper career? 

I decided to dedicate my life to it when I realized that what I did during the day it was draw and draw. I drew at school while the teacher explained, in the same way, that I later repeated this action at school, with one difference. I went from drawing still lifes and landscapes to studying the human figure. I spent classes observing my classmates and the teachers, searching the vogue runway to imitate the walking movement of the fashion figurines. Observing and imitating, I increasingly developed my own designs and increased my passion for fashion.

How would you define yourself as an artist today?

I am a free artist; I always express myself with total freedom, and I put all the effort and passion into my work. Although I work within fashion codes, giving my pieces the main function of being worn without problem, it goes hand in hand when creating pieces of this type. That is to say, I don't create thinking about "making clothes"; I create thinking about releasing an expression of feeling through silhouettes and materials. That's why I feel independent. That is why my clothes, at first sight, can seem like works, and they can seem deceptive.

Your work can be described as wearable art, as it stems from fashion design but with a much more artistic outcome. What inspired you to follow this path?

Working with fashion as an artistic concept leads me to dignify it, to fight for it to be considered an art, since it is not currently considered as such. See fashion as something more, work for the concept, an element from which the main idea is born and that many times designers don't show us, but rather it begins to be camouflaged. Also, make fashion a participant in exhibitions; the designs wouldn't necessarily have the sole function of wearing them, but rather, they would serve to claim or simply show them something.

Can you tell us about the process of creating your work? What is your artistic routine when working?

I usually start by collecting information about the topic and building my word cloud until I have a well-founded concept. At the same time, I create the moodboard and later comes the sketching phase, where all things are correct. Once I plan how I am going to make the final designs, I perfect the chosen sketch and solve the problems. The most important thing when I making the garment is the toile, a test that I perform to scale on a smaller mannequin. Furthermore, according to the concept, I am always looking for some material to experiment with a new texture that adds value to the design.

What are your sources of inspiration? And how do you incorporate and balance these influences into your work? 

The basis of inspiration always tends to be topics that worry me, that disturb me. They may have something to do with me, be related to my environment or not. They are just external things, and I wonder why they are like that or why certain things have to happen. In this way, my means of expression are my final designs. There are also artists who inspire me, not only because of what they do but because of how they are personally; highlighting Rick Owens, Vetements or the fashion illustrator Pezones Revueltos. And as I mentioned, it's not just artists who inspire me; also people around me, because of how they are, because of their values and ideals and because of how they treat me. I work on all these elements that will establish my work using silhouettes, color palettes that make the design take on color and transmit some meaning and, again; through textures. I think that fabrics are a white canvas that must be worked on, and textile experimentation is something that helps me achieve this.

What messages do you want to convey with your work?

As I say, I try to make the garment understood, that everything makes sense. I don't want the viewer to look at my work as a piece of "clothing"; it means more; ask yourself why it is like this, and you'll want to know more. Get people to question the works and wake up passion for fashion.

How do you differentiate your work from the rest? In other words, what do you feel makes it unique and truly your own?

I think it's avant-garde fashion. It doesn't follow any current trends; you could say that they are timeless designs. When I create them, I don't think about following any trend, I only express all my feelings in the garment. It's art that you can wear, that's why it's unique.

What do you think about the art community and market?

Nowadays, I don't know much about the function of the art market because fashion is my specialty, but it's something that I could research in a way that I am really interested.

Finally, are there any projects you are looking forward to for this year?

This year, I will do my final Fashion project, which I am going to start working on. In these next few months, I will start working on the conceptual part, as well as the research part, also beginning the sketching stage. The date for this project will be in September 2024, and it will be a collection of around six to nine looks.

Artist’s Talk

Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.