The Fashion
CLANDESTINAS / CUBA
Clandestina is the first sustainable urban fashion brand in Cuba. We started in 2015 so this year we are celebrating eight atomic years. We are a collective of Cuban designers and artists who create urban products inspired by the Cuban“resolver”. We support equal opportunities regardless of religion, origin, gender, sex or any other category that is currently in fashion. And we have a great sense of humor. Because in Cuba there is more sense of humor than inhabitants. We are Caribbean, resilient and sustainable. Clandestina is 99% Cuban Design. 1% out there. Because nothing is perfect. We believe in more ethical fashion and more sustainable production systems. Our production designs are inspired by upcycling and zero waste. In Cuba it is normal to recycle and reuse. We've been doing it for many years. And it is engraved in our genetics.
Metavelso Fashion Show
Clandestina presents its latest 2023 collection at Fabrica de Arte de las Américas. At Metavelso we create a parallel reality, we suffer a kind of real hygienic evasion. Metavelso is a place that no one can take away from us, a place where we don't have to leave.
The Clandestina 2023 Collection is inspired by our Cuban reality, a difficult reality, full of challenges and full of flow. One thing does not remove the other. This year the Clandestina proposal brings elephant leg pants, wide shirts and t-shirts, and guajiro code straw hats with feathers, to go on walks dressed as a queen. It also highlights the grid and mesh. Long veils that look like capes to combat mosquitoes, to protect the body and camouflage it.Even to give it a blur touch but without stopping to show and teach the body. This year's accessories are big, huge, without fear of oversizing things, emotions, moments. Also to measure the vacuum, make a hole. The collection brings super comfortable garments, prepared for adventure and complicated journeys. In our head and in our real life. All topped off with graphics alluding to the title of the collection.
Clandestina's Metavelso is an off-road mental and physical space, very muddy but full of glam, and prepared for all the unpredictable. And fun, with lots of colors and fun graphics, which help you accumulate good energy to continue on your way.
CELIA LEDON / CUBA - USA
Celia Ledon is a visual artist, costume designer and art director based in Miami, Florida. Born in Cuba she received her degree as an Industrial Designer at ISDI (Higher Institute of Industrial Design) in 2011. She has participated in several courses and workshops on art direction, and costume design for movies, among others.
Celia has presented her work at the Kennedy Center (Washington DC), Designlab (Miami), DORCAM, Doral Contemporary Art Museum, galleries in Portugal, and Cuban top art venues such as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, and Fabrica de Arte Cubano. She has worked in various theater, dance, and film productions. She is an award-winning costume designer and art director in video clips, fiction short films, commercials, and feature films. Celia works as a costume designer in Teatro el Publico, Ludi Teatro, several dance companies, and other independent performing arts companies in the production of theater plays, operas, and dance shows. Between 2018 and 2020, she joined the Clandestina creative group as a garment and pattern designer. During the pandemic she’s made several exhibits as a visual artist and has participated in several independent theater projects in collaboration with FUNDarte. She currently works as a visual artist with personal projects and exhibits throughout the US and abroad, as well as maintaining a career in cinema and theater in various roles.
Little Black Dress / Art Installation
Hybrids / Art Installation at Fashion Hall
Hybrids (the headshot collection) is part of a larger series where through photography images between dreams and realities are deconstructed and reconstructed, while silhouettes and designs overlap heterogeneous materials, coming together in the dialectical relationship that denotes fashion as a contemplative process. and its utilitarian value or social purpose. The poetic narrative that is established in the portraits in a kind of masquerade, introduces us to a world of disturbing looks and surreal characters.
The clash of the bold look of the photographer Eduardo Rawdriguez and the theatrical representations of the work of Celia Ledon, result in this series of portraits of protagonists of shared dreams.
Wearable Installations by Celia Ledon / Fashion Show
“The constant dialectic struggle that leads my creative process translates into a non-stopping exploration of materials and silhouettes. Both tangible materials and non-existing shapes, decide their unique path throughout the object d’art imagery; acquiring life of their own when they crash into each other through a creative action. Each piece of wearable art is a statement itself that speaks of the oppression of fashion as a systemic representation, in its inexhaustible cycle of irrational consumption, extravagance and terrifying beauty. The study of theatricality as a scene of representation, is the perfect niche for this sort of character, shouting about themselves both on mannequins, as well as in their most performative action, when they are placed on a body-stage, creating new meanings bound to the performer/display.
Reuse, recycling, the use of obsolete and discarded materials, are interwoven in the pieces with different craft techniques, creating different layers of interpretation and opposing concepts, such as 'the industrial' and 'the craft' as a basic example, 'the everyday' and 'the extravagance', 'the whole' and 'the part', 'the man' and 'the object man'. My practice is also a call to action towards sustainability in the face of unbridled consumption, the vanity generated by uncritical self-contemplation, making a statement that leads to the object and how it is constructed; as reality itself, so infinite towards the external, as full of reducible subsets from a silent macro-universe of minimum expressions. My pieces translate into a non-stopping exploration of silhouettes and all kinds of materials; recycled, discarded, or decontextualized, interwoven in the wearable art with different craft techniques, focusing on avantgarde and sustainability, that studies theatricality as scene of representation.” Celia Ledon
