LA BARRETERIA
Initially, craftwork stems from the immateriality of an idea. It is the result of the search for form, expression and elements that underlie creation and turn it into culture. However, culture cannot be understood without context, without a generational outlook or without the crossover between artistic disciplines.
From the outset, craftsmanship has been a driver and, at the same time, a catalyst in the world of fashion. Craftspeople have mastered techniques that expand, merge and connect with other artistic languages. The aim of the 080_BEYONDCRAFTS event is to spark a debate on this creative process on contemporary terms.
The focal point of 080_BEYONDCRAFTS is to act as an encounter. It should create a space where craftspeople are able to review their trades and put them in the context of Catalonia today, where they can challenge and share ideals and game plans. Projects that often break the mould, push past borders and force us, as members of the public who are not insiders, to ask ourselves new questions and come up with alternative answers. This event thus serves as a round table in which creative processes and thoughts converge in the current context, and in which different perspectives on current crafts unfold.
For the first time, a common thread has come to light that brings these creators together who elevate culture and thought through their works. Bringing them together in the same space allows us to understand the true value of what is happening today in the world of craft and culture.
The first edition of 080_BEYONDCRAFTS will focus on millinery as a trade, through the display of a set of pieces by craftspeople that shed new light on how to understand this work. Both through the techniques and the concepts behind these pieces, this exhibition aims to illustrate how millinery currently finds vent by raising questions and providing answers to the cultural concerns of our time.
ARTISANS
ANA VIVERO & NÚRIA GREGORI
Ana Vivero is an artist and anthropologist who works from her milliner’s workshop in Barcelona’s Gràcia district, where she creates one-off pieces using traditional techniques and recovered materials such as wool, silk, feathers and fabrics. Her work combines artistic creation, research and cultural mediation by exploring the past, her trade and experimentation.
Núria Gregori is a fashion stylist and a member of the German collective the Artists’ Pool, who is based in Barcelona, Hamburg and Berlin. She works in fashion and contemporary visual arts, with a focus on quality, singularity and the sector’s changing paradigms, as well as giving lectures on master’s degree courses on fashion styling.
Name of the work: Dior Ranger
Date: September 2025
Materials: Cloche of rabbit fur from the historical archive of the firm Rius de Forns that has been recovered and redefined in this new creation.
Technique or process: The millinery work included cleaning and reconditioning the fur, modelling on a traditional mould and subsequent handiwork to achieve the desired finish.
Size: Brim diameter of 50 cm. Crown height of 10 cm.
Description of the piece and creative process:
The Dior Ranger is an avocado-green oversized hat that sets off the rectangular crown, with masculine overtones, against the New Look brim, the epitome of post-war femininity. It is a velour cloche made of rabbit fur by Rodolphe Simon, recovered from the historical archive of the firm Rius de Forns. To give it shape, we worked with old hat blocks from this archive, put together in layers like a jigsaw puzzle: one of cork for the crown and another of esparto for the brim. Thanks to steam and ironing by hand, the piece has taken on volume and character. The result is a hybrid silhouette, between hardiness and fragility, which breaks all conventional rules.
ANDREA VIÊNTËC
She is an artist and designer based in Barcelona, specialised in millinery and accessories with a strong conceptual and visual impact. Trained in fine arts at the University of Barcelona and in hat design at Central Saint Martins in London, she combines art and fashion in her work. Her pieces explore identity, the body and transformation using fabrics, sculptural forms and her personal aesthetics to bring about physical and symbolic relationships with whoever wears them.
She combines her artistic creations with capsule collections, made-to-measure commissions, set design, fashion and film. Recently her work has taken her in the direction of creating her own materials and fabrics, in which she blends in ephemeral, biodegradable components such as raffia and alginate to open new paths in the relationship between process, body and time.
Name of the work: Avava Samo Raffia Hat
Date: September 2023
Materials: Dyed raffia and cotton fibres.
Technique or process: Handmade from the fabric and partly crocheted with raffia and cotton fibres.
Size: 28 cm across the back, 15 cm across the front piece and outer circumference of 68 cm.
Description of the piece and creative process:
Avava Samo arose from an order placed by a client with whom we made a samurai garment. The intention behind both the garment and the hat was to revisit the classic materials used for this type of clothing, with a firm nod to the traditions involved in using them, and to take an approach that reflected the overtones of the original fabrics. Harking back to the materials and fabrics used by other cultures, including ours, I crocheted it to emulate volumes and shapes that appear in Samoan and other Oceanic island traditions. That is where the name of the piece comes from, as does its intention to establish a dialogue between cultures.
Espíritu Club x Iceblade
Espíritu Club is a brand specialised in upcycling based in Barcelona that turns waste and leftovers from the textile industry into unique pieces using creative, sustainable techniques. With a community focus, the collective seeks to bring about significant relationships and raise awareness about the importance of sustainable consumption and to value materials that last.
Its studio is in a place called Sitio, an open-minded sustainable meeting place in Barcelona’s Gràcia district. The collective is made up of fashion designers, graphic designers, photographers and specialists in marketing who work as a horizontal organisation that promotes diversity, inclusion and freedom of expression. Espíritu Club’s creations stem from a collective, collaborative process using recycled materials by combining aesthetic sensitivity, eco-friendliness and a dialogue with the environment.
Name of the work: Potter’s Visor
Date: 2024
Materials: PLA (polylactic acid), a wholly organic, compostable corn-based fermented biopolymer.
Technique or process: 3D printing.
Size: 19 cm x 17 cm x 11 cm (approx.)
Description of the piece and creative process:
Our work, Potter’s Visor was created in collaboration with the Mexican designer Iceblade as part of our Chapter 03 project. It belongs to the 2024 Oficios co-selection, which seeks to pay tribute to the dedication, tools and garments that characterise artisans. Inspired in their meticulous work and profound connection with raw materials, Espíritu Club endeavours to raise awareness among the general public about the importance of sustainable consumption and to value what lasts. It is printed in 3D using PLA (polylactic acid), a wholly organic, compostable corn-based fermented biopolymer. The visor is held onto the head with the help of eight pieces of string made from second-hand T-shirts.
JAVIER GUIJARRO
Javier Guijarro Torrell, known as Javier Guijarro, is a young Catalan designer who forms part of the new scene in Barcelona and Spain thanks to his brand that bears his name. After causing a stir on social media, he launched his brand in 2022 at the age of just 22.
His work combines the essence of classic male clothing with new outlines and contemporary attitudes that reflect personal experiences, culture, landscapes and his surroundings. Guijarro transforms the classic concept from the viewpoint of new generations to create an identity of a well-established fresh brand on the same wavelength as everyday life and art.
Name of the work: The Big Cap
Date: September 2023
Materials: Wool felt.
Technique or process: A sculptural cap in grey wool felt, shaped by hand using steam and heat on a wooden mould.
Size: 20 cm x 15 cm x 36 cm
Description of the piece and creative process:
Its asymmetric silhouette elongated frontwards casts a deep shadow on the face, which makes the piece seem contemporary and experimental. The creative process starts out from a felt cloche, which is then shaped by hand until it matches the shape of the mould. Once dry and set, the finishes on the cut are made and then ironed to achieve the stiffness and clean-cut lines of the volume. The result is a piece that fuses traditional hat-making techniques and a modern sculptural design.
MAGDALENA HART
Magdalena Hart’s work straddles art, ecology and technology. She creates sensitive devices to inhabit the tensions between ecology and current narratives by exploring how to imagine potential future scenarios from what is sensitive to what is superhuman. Her history of personal and family migrations has marked her sensitivity to the body as an archive and her language as a changeable territory. In 2018, she co-founded Akyute, an artistic duo that puts on interactive installations. In 2023, her collection of wearable glass sculptures, Rain and Rivers, came out that express fragility and presence. She is also involved in Manglar, a transdisciplinary collective inspired in hybrid ecosystems.
Name of the work: How is a Person’s Courage Born?
Date: 2025
Materials: Borosilicate glass, stainless steel, beeswax.
Technique or process: Hand-blown glass. A technique was used to incorporate steel screws that hold up beeswax candles.
Size: 14 cm x 10 cm x 18 cm
Description of the piece and creative process:
This piece forms part of the performance A Skin of Soil [Live A/V], put on alongside Akyute (Magdalena Hart and Natalia Gima) and Alice Sparkly Kat. Together they explored a year in the life of a snake to inhabit new skins: a series of narrative stories and reflections that play with the concept of resurrection by fire. As Alice reminds us: If 2025 is the year of the snake, the time to burn has come. The performance will be staged for the first time at the 2025 Mira Festival.
NICOLÁS ALONSO
Nicolás is a designer and artisan specialised in fashion and accessories. His work explores the fusion between traditional techniques and a poetic language to create pieces that shift between function and symbolism. Inspired in nostalgia, bohemianism and drama, he conceives each piece as a fragment of history and memory.
Name of the work: Memory of a Sailor’s Hat
Date: 2025
Materials: Dyed lambskin leather, satin ribbons, thread.
Technique or process: Made by hand in leather, sewn and side cord fastening.
Size: brim of 7 cm, total height of 12 cm, diameter of 23 cm
Description of the piece and creative process:
The piece is inspired by traditional sailors’ hats. Its simple silhouette is highlighted by the red interior and ribbons on the side that prolong the idea of a coastline and memories of travel. Made of lambskin leather, it retains the grandeur of the material and the sobriety of sailors’ attire, which here has been transformed into an object laden with theatricality and poetry.
SARA HUGUET
Sara Huguet, a fashion designer based in Barcelona, combines the skills learnt during her studies with her experience of setting up a theatre company with some friends, the source of her leanings towards showmanship and experimentation. Her work straddles fashion, craftwork and performance.
Name of the work: SH Headpiece 8
Name of the artist/artisan: Sara Huguet
Date: May 2025
Materials: Waxed twill distressed by hand, black leather, organza with partially die-cut circles and guinea fowl feathers.
Technique or process: Headpiece in the shape of a clip.
Size: 25 cm x 12 cm
Description of the piece and creative process:
In a creative process guided by intuition, I take offcuts from my favourite textiles that I have worked with and make a collage on my head that I use as a mannequin and I look at myself in the mirror to find harmony between the fabrics (until I find a winsome combination).
SWAN SALON
Swan Salon is a space specialised in the transformation of identity through physical and symbolic makeovers. It designs and makes headpieces that combine traditional techniques with contemporary uses that work as critical devices on the body and its representation. What drives Swan Salon’s creations does not necessarily stem from an aesthetic appeal, but rather draws on the cultural, political and social powers that imbue the experience of change.
Name of the work: Hairy Hat
Date: April 2024
Materials: Human hair and synthetic fibres.
Technique or process: Collection, sewing and placement of human head hair, intertwined with reused, pre-existing synthetic fabrics. Styling of the fibre and incorporation of additional textures.
Size: 30 cm × 60 cm
Description of the piece and creative process:
Hairy Hat forms part of a set of products that defy time designed to help bodies express and redefine contemporary perceptions. This piece challenges the boundaries between identity, ornament and transformation: hair, laden with cultural, political and inner meanings, is displaced from its original context to become a plastic, performative material. In the dialogue between reused synthetic fabrics, the outcome questions appeal as a unique value and endeavours to understand changes in the body as a space for contemporary expression, resistance and redefinition.
To mark 080 Barcelona Fashion 2025, Artesania Catalunya is staging the 080_BEYONDCRAFTS event, a space for reflection so that the public can understand the creative processes behind contemporary crafts by underlining their crucial role in the world of fashion and culture. Thus, the aim is to showcase the network of craftspeople who are shaping craft as we know it today.
In planning this encounter, each craftsperson was asked to define the most significant form of expression behind the creative process. Based on their responses, ten illustrations have been designed that sit alongside each piece, together with this immersive exhibition setting. The shapes, movements and textures shift according to each creator’s perspective, transforming each piece into a singular contribution to the whole.
Guillermo Solas, Creative Director
The Team:
Guillermo Solas - Creative Director (@guillermo.solas)
Pau Geis - Producer (@paugeis)
Marta Gutierrez - Display Designer (@martagutierrz)
Oriol Colomer - Video and Editing Engineer (@oriolonbass)
Arnau Coll – Digital Artist (@mimitos.online)
Jaime Domingo – Sound and Sound Design Engineer (@bankruptbra)
