Ask anyone who has never set foot in the Canary Islands to describe the archipelago’s fashion, and the answer will probably be: swimwear. That’s exactly the association nine Canarian designers and labels are setting out to break on 17 September, when they take the runway at Madrid’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, one of Spanish fashion’s biggest showcases.
The participation, driven by Proexca, the public agency for internationalising the Canarian economy, brings nine names to Madrid with very different approaches: Aurelia Gil, Viperinas, Alex Menorca, Marco y María, Chacho SVNRS, Angie Vázquez, Roselinde, BAN Artesanía Cuero and Diazar. Behind the selection sits creative direction from Rubén Gómez and Pepe Trapiello of studio Pelonio, who built the show’s concept and staging in the weeks leading up to the event.
For Alfonso Cabello, head of the Canarian fashion sector, the Madrid showcase “confirms the work we’ve been doing in recent years, together with all the island councils, to approach Canarian fashion from a place of unity and with an industrial outlook” designed to help professionals and companies go international. Cabello added a figure that gives the moment real economic weight, beyond image-building: the sector already accounts for roughly 3% of the Canary Islands’ GDP and generates activity, jobs and professional opportunities.
The project’s creative director, Rubén Gómez, framed the goal in terms that go beyond a single runway show: “showing Spain and the world what’s happening in the Canarian creative scene,” a movement he says reaches beyond fashion into music and other art forms. The line the nine labels will bring to the stage, he explained, aims to build “a fashion rooted in craft, in pattern-making and in refinement, but also in trends, in streetwear, and in nightlife and festive fashion” — in other words, the opposite of the beach imagery that has represented the islands to the rest of Spain for decades.
Proexca’s CEO, Pablo Martín Carbajal, also attended the preparatory working session, underlining just how much the operation is designed as an economic lever as well as a cultural one. Fashion Week Madrid puts Canarian labels in direct contact with buyers, press and other industry professionals, opening up collaboration opportunities that rarely present themselves from the islands alone. Whether this exposure translates into actual orders and sustained growth for the nine participating labels remains to be seen. But the stated ambition, to stop being defined by summer alone, is already a shift in pace for a sector that until recently struggled to get noticed beyond regional borders.
