In Ana Locking’s workshop, the models from her latest collection, whose title: Too young to die old, it seems hauntingly foreboding today. Shortly after presenting her at Madrid Fashion Week in 2020, days before confinement, she was diagnosed with breast cancer for which she had to be operated on and whose treatment has not ruined her red hair, as she does not require chemotherapy, she relates. . His voice sounds spirited behind the black surgical mask with white polka dots, his design for a popular Spanish firm, which he wears throughout the interview and is only removed for the video. In the background, his partner and head of communication, who also became seriously ill with covid, attends the talk. Among them, the complicity of the survivors to the vicissitudes of life and long relationships is noted.
I interviewed her 8 years ago in a story about anxiety. How have we handled that since then?
Before the pandemic, fashion went like a horse runaway off a cliff. Too many collections, too many clothes, too much everything. We don’t need that much. After the break, the reflection should be: let’s be more responsible. We demand it of buyers, because let’s be it with what we offer and with the ability to enjoy our work. We are privileged to be able to do what we like
I was referring to your own anxiety.
At that time I learned to manage it with therapy and medication, but I got hooked on the pills and it took me a lot to quit. Now I control her, but she never completely abandons you. Lately I hardly enjoyed the collections. Every time he demanded more of me: more color, more clothes, more product. Each time I had to offer more and demanded more of myself. That was not the way.
And suddenly, the world stopped. Cancer, confinement, covid. How did you handle so many earthquakes?
The diagnosis was a beastly collapse: the first days you have real awareness of death. Suddenly, you understand cancer, you do not feel in real connection with it until you have it and you feel the power of the disease in yourself. Nobody prepares you for that.
Was he pissed off at the world?
The first moment is from shock, like those movies in which someone has a terrible accident and, first of all, starts looking for the lipstick that has fallen off. Then comes the emotional. The first day you cry around the corners. But, in my case, the second, you have to take things as they come. You cannot be a coward, I have become brave, very brave. Fear becomes a traveling companion that always accompanies you. But I take him by the hand, not he me.
Did you surprise yourself?
A lot, because, when I got home, my partner fell with covid and I had to go from being sick to being a nurse. You don’t think, you act. I didn’t have time to lick my wounds and, over time, it came in handy. In 2020 I collapsed and was reborn.
The virus has been primed with the elderly. Are your parents living?
Yes, and I’m an only child, something I’ve always hated. I have always revolted like an animal against the stereotypes of the only child.
Was she a spoiled child?
I came out very strange and very rebellious. My mother was a seamstress and I wanted to do the opposite of her. I’ve always had a complicated relationship with her, but the disease has brought us closer. I have been aware that life is finite, and that we cannot regret not having done things when people are gone. I have seen my parents with different eyes and that has made me be more understanding with them than ever.
What is pandemic fashion like, beyond pajamas and tracksuits?
This year we have badly dressed, we have muddled through. But dressing is not fashion. Fashion with capital letters has nothing to do with the clothes you buy out of necessity. Fashion creates an illusion, it is an effort to sophisticate reality. Now that there are no events or parties, we don’t sell anything. I think when they come back, people will need to get out of this harsh reality, and post-pandemic fashion will be bright, colorful, it will generate a beauty that we can dream of. Fashion also gives perspectives in life.
How does time go by? Do you understand Demi Moore and her tireless urge to look younger?
Of course I understand. The illusion is perfectly respectable. I don’t have that need to polish the passage of time. I think it is good that science makes available to each person to be who they want to be. In the end, the identity is made by yourself, and you are happier the closer you get to the idea you have of it.
And what is your idea of you?
Sometimes overly responsible. I have a very strong class consciousness, I come from a humble, hardworking family, and that consciousness weighs too heavily on me. I would like to be more free when it comes to letting myself go, feel, express myself.
But her ecosystem as a designer is luxury and elite. How do you combine it?
That dichotomy has always been present. I believe that in that collision is the key to my success, and to my strength, too. Because I have always known, and I have not forgotten, where I come from, but I have managed to convert all that, to sophisticate it, and take it to a level that has made me enjoy life and dream and make me dream.
Do you think Carolina Herrera would make that hair ugly almost to the waist at 50?
It seems to me a real outrage. It is not a question of style, it is a question of freedom, and of how the woman uses it to be herself. If you feel free to be an object woman, or play with fashion to feel like another, go ahead. That does not mean that you are banal. There are no superficial clothes. There are superficial looks and people. And that strikes me as a tremendously superficial look at women.
Will the pandemic affect fashion consumption? We have seen that, teleworking, we live with three rags.
I think it will go to a more responsible consumption. That we will realize that buying things at a price that, if you think about it, can only be made by slaves, is not sensible. And that implies that people, instead of buying ten garments a month at a ridiculous price to accumulate, buy two or three, of quality, that make them dream.
So what would shopaholics say to addicts? Is for a friend.
Let’s see, I can understand them, but how can I understand a gambling addict. Everything is understood, but I would seek help.
JOURNEY OF THE 50
Ana Álvarez Rodríguez (Toledo, 50 years old), Ana Locking for the world of fashion, never thought that 2020, the year of her 50th birthday, was going to turn her upside down figuratively and literally. The pandemic, a diagnosis and operation of breast cancer in full confinement and the convalescence by Covid of his partner. they have turned her into a new and “braver” version of herself. In 2021, the year of her 25th anniversary as a professional designer, in addition to collecting the National Design Award that was awarded to her a few months ago, she presents an exhibition in Madrid on the impact of the pandemic on the fashion universe. Few like her know what they expose. He has suffered it in his own flesh and soul.
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