![Looks from the Fall Winter 2017 collection of Spanish label Delpozo.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170829010425/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/v/q/i/u/image.related.afrWideArticleLead.940x529.gxb2hg.png/1503520839509.jpg)
![Marion Hume](http://web.archive.org./web/20170829010425im_/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/u/m/9/c/5/image.imgtype.afrAuthorAvatar.120x120.png/1488169473358.png)
A peril of being red hot is you can't control which way the sparks fly. For the past few years, heat has been building around Delpozo, whose most ardent fans may not even know it is pronounced not with a zed but "Del-po-th-o" – with the lisping "th" of its native Spain.
The Madrid-based brand stages its shows twice a year in New York (Ready-to-Wear) with two further presentations (Cruise, as well as Pre-Fall) in Paris. The front row set, such as Tank magazine's elegant Caroline Issa and US Vogue contributing editor Lauren Santo Domingo, admire vivid colours and graphic shapes that work well, both for their glossy magazines and for their personal Instagram posts. Perhaps even more powerful, the brand is seen on the likes of superstar singers such as Zendaya and Rihanna.
Yet the Spanish label appeals equally to Hollywood stars of rare discernment. Cate Blanchett was the first celebrity to wear Delpozo in its current guise, under the creative direction of the wiry and handsome Josep Font from Barcelona, who has completely reminted the 43-year-old brand since he joined in 2012. His creations are unapologetically romantic yet somehow never fey. They are festooned with flowers yet resist being cute. These clothes have both the vigour of contemporary art yet the rigour needed to enhance the wearer rather than suffocate her under the weight of a vision. This difficult balance is a hallmark of true talent.
No wonder then that the label is not only liked, it is revered. Such bold style signatures as oversized sculptural details, origami layers and capricious colour combinations have also won over Naomi Watts, snapped so often wearing a voluminous yet cropped jacket that it appears to be her go-to favourite. You'd be surprised how rare it is to find clothes that work yet have magic and allure.
![Melania Trump wearing Delpozo when she and Donald Trump are greeted by Poland's first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda and ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170829010425/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/6/f/d/l/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1503490635796.jpg)
Then came Melania
The fashion industry has become something of a misnomer, given the dominant share of its profits actually comes from accessories. Not that Font has ignored those. Delpozo's shoes and bags, dotted with massive bows that manage to appear architectural as opposed to saccharine, have a cult following. To pump up the heat yet further, the accessory du jour – outsized "statement" earrings (better suited to an era of selfies than an "It" bag or a shoe) – can be traced directly to Delpozo, which first showed luminous ear ornaments almost as big as chandeliers several seasons ago, thereby igniting the trend. All this adds up to style sizzle.
Then came Melania. No one at Delpozo had any idea that the First Lady of the United States of America was among an ever-expanding fan base until the door slid open after Air Force One touched down in Poland on July 6. There was FLOTUS, and not just in any Delpozo dress but in the navy fit and flare sleeveless midi, featuring a hothouse pink and red whorl appliqué, which Delpozo fans had anointed as the dress of the season. After the collection had been revealed to the Fashion Pack back in January, WWD, an industry newspaper, termed Delpozo's work "modern-day armour". There are few who would doubt Melania Trump's need of that. But as Delpozo was about to discover, the brand needed it too, with added fireproofing.
Delpozo posted a picture on Instagram, just as it had done when Michelle Obama, for whom the term FLOTUS was coined, appeared equally unexpectedly, in a white Delpozo dress at an event during the Obama presidency. But Melania is not the new Michelle and the reaction was LOUD (when the digital world shouts, it does so in capitals). The Trumps had hardly shaken the hands of Poland's President Andrzej Duda and his wife before Delpozo's own Instagram site was ablaze with flame emojis, multiple thumbs down, broken hearts and, it should be noted, some red hearts and Stars and Stripes, indicative of praise.
Fashion fans now show the tribal allegiance once reserved for soccer teams. "EW!" "Boooooo", "Bleahh" were among the comments from this binary universe. "FLOTUS is a hollow shell married to a dirty, dotty old racist. I can only feel sad because I truly adore your brand" posted @rachy.granto. @sandyssue seemed to sum up a deep sadness, widely felt: "Feeling like I lost a pet right now."
![Josep Font prepares a model backstage at the Fall Winter 2017 Delpozo show.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170829010425/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/v/p/w/j/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1503490637567.jpg)
Other designers tend not to advertise when Melania wears their clothes. That Delpozo did is true to the spirt of Josep Font. The designer's own thoughts? "Delpozo caters to different demographics and is followed by a diverse range of women, not taking into account their age, nationality, profession and, in this case, party affiliation," he tells me by email. "Former First Lady Michelle Obama also wore Delpozo, and now the current FLOTUS." He rejects the idea of any chosen "type", instead aiming to appeal to "a global woman, not any specific age or person". This is, commendably, measured and non-judgmental. Within cyberspace, irate may overrule reason but how many of these passionate "followers" overlap with those who actually buy the clothes?
Meeting Josep Font
"Pre Melania", back in May, Font and I meet at the Sloane Street, London store, the address itself indicating Delpozo, which is privately held, is a serious business. It sits at the smartest nexus of this long street, alongside the stores of Valentino and Giorgio Armani. The window display is dominated not by clothes, but by a luminous art piece of metallic mesh and iridescent Plexiglas refractions by the Korean-American installation artist, Soo Sunny Park with whom Font has collaborated. Inside, he manages to translate this play of light into intricate pleated pieces in translucent fabrics that seem lighter than air. And that's just the day wear. The really extraordinary creations are evening wear and bridal pieces that hang in the surprisingly airy basement which is the VIP suite. Font and I perch among these at either end of an enormous grey sofa.
He is dressed in dark jeans, black T-shirt. His body language is tense, indicating being interviewed is not a favourite activity, not least because English (and not so much of it) is his fourth language after Catalan, Spanish and French. Font is Spanish, yes, but he hails from Catalunya, which is rigorously independent within Spain.
![Actress Naomi Watts wearing a bell-sleeved cropped Delpozo jacket.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170829010425/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/v/q/2/6/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1503490636750.jpg)
When Font was born in 1968, Spain was in the final years of the military dictatorship of General Franco. Font is the son of an extremely elegant mother, who sadly has not lived to witness her son's acclaim, and a traditional father. He was in real estate, she was one of the founders of a specialist hospital for cancer research. Font's childhood was typical of the time: Catholic school, priests, keeping your head down. It sounds like he was lonely; according to the gossip website Hola!, Font stopped speaking between the ages of six and eight. It's hard to judge if he has grown up to be chatty, given the layers of language barrier between us. (His communications director is also on hand to translate.)
His voice is quiet, yet he answers some questions simply with a forceful "No". We discuss whether it is advantageous to be in Madrid, which, vibrant as it is, sits apart from the global fashion cities. "I feel like even if I lived in Paris or London, I would be the same. I was like this when I lived in Barcelona. I find a way to disconnect. On the weekend I go to the countryside; nature is very important for me." Font has a weekender in Segovia, an hour outside Madrid. He offers nothing beyond that on his personal life.
Colour me beautiful
He only becomes effusive after the interview when he watches me admire the clothes on the racks. At last, he cracks a smile at the sight of my appreciation of an intricate appliqué and the scalloped edges of a gown. He knows about beautiful clothes; he grew up with them. His well-to-do upbringing was brightened by his mother dressing for society parties and also by his making doll figurines. These revelations echo back to another lonely boy with a glamorous mother, the late Yves Saint Laurent, who had an obsession for paper dolls and with whom Font shares that extraordinary ability to match the least likely colours. Cerulean blue, flame-red, grass green somehow marry in his work with the blush-pink of almond blossom. Colour is used both in bold blocks and in exquisite embroideries, the latter – so modern – on detachable panels to aid dry cleaning.
![A bow ballerina flat from the Resort 2018 collection.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170829010425/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/v/r/3/r/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1503490635892.jpg)
Font studied architecture at university, thus joining a long line of fashion designers including Pierre Cardin and Tom Ford. Without telling his family, he had been taking pattern-cutting classes and he entered a Paris fashion competition (a tactic that had worked previously for Yves Saint Laurent as well as Karl Lagerfeld). Called the Air France Prix, he won it. An uncle found out by reading about it in the newspaper. His father was grudgingly supportive. Font finished his architecture studies and moved over to fashion.
His cultural coming of age collided with those of both Spain and the state of Catalunya bursting into a creative fever in the post-Franco years. In the national capital, this was called Movida. (The filmmaker Pedro Almodovar is its most famous "alumni".) Keen to emerge as a global city, Madrid launched an annual fashion week called Cibeles at the dawn of the 1990s. I was there. One of the designers, showing ultra ladylike eveningwear, went by the magnificent name of Jesús del Pozo.
The Catalan capital, Barcelona, not to be outdone, launched its fashion week named Gaudi, for its most celebrated son, the architect Antoni Gaudi. I was there too. Among the fledgling designers was Josep Font, then working as a duo as Josep Font y Luz Diaz. So what of her? On this he will make no direct comment. What he does say is that through the '90s, he built his own ready-to-wear line. In 2007, after having shown it on the catwalks of Milan, Barcelona, Madrid, and Tokyo as well as Paris, he was invited to show a couture collection (the most exacting level of all) on the Paris Haute Couture Week schedule, which he did for four seasons.
Perfumes not to Font's taste
![Cate Blanchett wearing Delpozo in Cannes in 2014.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170829010425/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/v/p/s/r/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1503490637408.jpg)
Then something happened. "The relationship with the partners didn't go very well; I won't be able to give a lot of details," is all he will say beyond confirming, yes, there is an ongoing legal battle with former partners. By the time Delpozo came calling in 2012, Font was living in Taipei, designing evening and bridal wear which was flogged across mainland China. "It was hard," he recalls while staring at his New Balance sneakers. "I lost half of my body weight but at the same time it was also a very challenging and learning experience. My idea when I finished my time in China was to go to Paris. It was super clear to me that was what I was going to do. Then Delpozo happened …"
Jesús del Pozo had died in 2011. His name, now rendered as Delpozo, was acquired by Grupo Perfumes y Diseño in 2012. The Spanish perfume giant was already licensing the name for scents (this as J Del Pozo) while the eponymous designer was alive and these continue to be widely available in Spain. The bestseller since its launch in 1997 is called Halloween, comes in a purple flacon and is inspired by "the mysterious woman, the vamp". Fragrance notes include powdery violet and green banana. Upmarket it is not.
Does Font like it? "No." Neither does he like the "sweet oriental" Arabian Nights fragrance aimed at the Gulf States and launched in 2011. On the plus side, he says even in Spain there is no confusion between these mass market scents, which have their own appeal, and the rarefied world of Delpozo of his creation. Is he working on a new perfume? "Of course." What will it be called? "It's a secret." I keep pushing. He shakes his head, signalling: "I will reveal nothing."
Where there's scent, there's cash, which meant that when Delpozo's owners went looking for a designer, they could afford to take a punt on one whose demands would be expensive. Font, whom the owners signed in March 2012, demanded fashion shows to take place outside Spain for exposure. He also wanted the ateliers in Spain to employ the most skilled artisans, including embroiderers trained at the legendary Maison Lesage of Paris (owned by Chanel yet also supplies to other brands). His ambition was clear from the get-go: "I wanted to create an icon brand."
Why were Delpozo so keen on getting Font on board? Pedro Trolez, chairman of the brand, explains: "When we decided to acquire the brand that Jesús del Pozo had created we were looking for someone who shared the same values of design and creativity. Josep's aesthetic has always been based on volume, colour and texture, and adds the embroidery element. We felt he was the man for the job for this new chapter for the house."
Stores in London, Madrid, Dubai
The brand has two beautiful own-stores, one in London and one in Madrid. A third, with franchise partner Al Abbar Group, will open in November in the snazzy extension of the Dubai Mall. There its closests neighbours will be other purveyors of ready-to-wear so "haute" – Giambattista Valli and Azzedine Alaïa – it is often termed "prêt-à-couture".
While these brands create very intricate clothing, they're a rare group going against the wider trend. We are now in the Age of Athleisurewear, dominated by Nicolas Ghesquiere of Louis Vuitton, whose creations, often in sportswear fabrications, are grab-and-go in everything but the price tags. A key trend in fashion now is the crossover with gym clothes that are designed to work out and to wear out (Australia's P E Nation is getting global attention for this).
![Delpozo’s shoes and bags, dotted with massive bows that manage to appear architectural as opposed to saccharine, have a ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170829010425/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/v/r/3/s/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1503490636168.jpg)
It is the opposite to what Font is about. Not every woman wants to look like she has just been lifting weights. Add to this that Font is a true creator, as opposed to a stylist, who reissues and re-spins looks from before. (That's not easy either, by the way. If it were, we would all be Ralph Lauren or Tom Ford.) Font's aim is high: to create the new yet the eternal; he answers a question of sustainability by stating that his responsibility is to make beautiful pieces that never go out of fashion. The level of "prêt-à-couture" means prices in the thousands but not the tens of thousands and more.
Yet at first, Font resisted Delpozo's overtures that he should take up the mantle as creative director for the brand. He was wary of the move to Madrid "where I felt that I would be invading someone else's space, someone else's project", by which he means walking in the footsteps of a designer who had only recently died. He also feared taking a job that was "a risk because it had never been done in Spain". (To note here, Loewe is a Spanish brand which has been reinvented but the design studio is in Paris, the designer is Irish and it is owned by global luxury conglomerate LVMH.)
And in any case, what would a perfume company know about building such a high-level brand? There's a case study here. In 1954, the Wertheimer family, then owners of the Chanel perfume licence (they now control the entire empire), feared sales of No. 5 would start to dip without fashion visibility, so they financed the relaunch of Chanel's couture house, which Coco herself had shuttered after World War II.
From perfume to fashion
But as discussed, the J Del Pozo scents are not Chanel No. 5. "At the beginning, I really didn't know what was going to happen because before this company had only done perfume so this was their first fashion ready-to-wear," says Font. "No one expected the big repercussion that [Delpozo] has had in these short five years. But the group were very keen and very excited, and through conversations we really connected and they wanted to do the same thing, to relaunch it as an international brand.
"What I've kept is the way we work, atelier style: modelling fabric, volume and everything on mannequins. I also wanted to keep alive the tradition of craftsmen in Spain because that history is slowly dying. Once I decided, I decided to give it my all to really make it work and push it forward."
He sensed how demanding this was going to be. "I knew I would be doing four collections a year and at some periods of the time, like now, that means working on three collections at the same moment. I am finishing Resort (Cruise), that's going to be presented in June. I am in the midst of Spring/Summer [to be presented] for September. And I've just started this morning, selecting fabrics for Pre-Fall. It's important to me to be very clear on the inspirations of each collection, because if not, it would be super messy and crisscrossed." He says he is able to compartmentalise, calling his design process "very orderly".
He explains why each collection he creates forges two unexpected juxtapositions. "I like mixing two different concepts, two inspirations to create something fresh and new, something interesting. Like, the more wide apart they are, almost the better for the clash and the mix." Recent collections have been inspired by early filmmaker George Méliès, who was obsessed with the moon, along with sculptor Anthony Caro, who is fascinated by light. In another collection, the Gypsy Ballads of the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca collided with the style of Emilie Flöge, Gustav Klimt's young Viennese lover.
![“It was hard. I lost half of my body weight, but it was also a very challenging
and learning experience," Font says of ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170829010425/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/v/p/r/x/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1503490637488.jpg)
Australian inspiration
The collection he is forming in his mind right now is inspired, he reveals, by an image, stumbled upon on the internet, of a naturally bubblegum pink lake ringed by a bright green forest and next to an azure blue sea. This is Australia's saline Lake Hillier, on the edge of Middle Island in Western Australia. Font has never visited Australia; he just loves the colour combination. The Melbourne artist Rhys Lee is another source of inspiration.
The collection from which the "Trump" dress evolved was inspired by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer along with Mary Delany, an 18th-century bluestocking who made mosaic flowers. Where Melania Trump bought her dress has not been disclosed, yet the style is "officially sold out". This, not according to the company but to Breitbart News, the commentary website for which Stephen Bannon, President Trump's chief strategist serves as executive chairman. Verifying a sell-out "officially" would require stock-checking across multiple merchants. Why take the time? Breitbart, new to fashion coverage, did however pepper the rest of its report with accurate, insider terms such as "scuba knit" and "decoupage".
What's certain is that Josep Font is hot. There will, inevitably, be a couple of high-profile job vacancies soon, given the advanced age of industry giants such as Karl Lagerfeld and Giorgio Armani. Yet those previously talked about as possible heirs to these jobs – Marc Jacobs, Phoebe Philo, Haider Ackermann, Raf Simons, all at one time or another on the "Chanel rumour list" should octogenarian Karl Lagerfeld ever retire – have waited so long they have either peaked, established themselves with labels of a scale from which they are unlikely to walk away, or simply lost their heat. Font, who appears to have emerged from nowhere, is by contrast gathering that. It certainly didn't hurt that at the opening, this past May, of the Balenciaga exhibition at London's V&A; museum, one of his outfits was chosen to illustrate the eternal legacy of Cristobal Balenciaga, who was, after all, an outsider who emerged from Spain.
Font has been in the fashion game long enough to be sanguine about what might happen in future. While he dreams big dreams for Delpozo and says he is content ("I'm happy here. I have learned to be happy in myself"), he doesn't deny that he may be, paradoxically, making it more likely he will leave. Have the headhunters come calling? He nods while looking at his shoes. Does he share the view that he might, at last, be fashion's next big thing? A pause. More staring at his feet. "Ya puede venir San Pedro," says Font quietly. The expression, the literal translation of which is "Saint Peter can come" is akin to "not in a million years".
Let's see about that.
The AFR Magazine Fashion Issue is out Friday, August 28, inside The Australian Financial Review.
![Backstage at the Delpozo Fall Winter 2017 runway show.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170829010425/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/x/v/p/q/z/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1503490636838.jpg)