Optimism via black

"My show was full of vitality and good vibes, but I don't think anybody noticed," said María Escoté on Tuesday of Honolulu Dark, a collection largely devoid of color and which, in fact, had little or nothing to do with Hawaii. "I was inspired by the idea that the sun fails to reconjure life after death." How deeply has the economic crisis influenced her? "I closed my store in Triball in Madrid and now sell only in Carlos Díez. I've maintained the store in Barcelona, but I will not fool anyone: I'm trying to be more commercial," she confessed.

Curiously lowering her esthetic tone, the Catalan returned to Cibeles to arch a few eyebrows with her beaded dress-trikini and gothic Little Red Riding hood capes with bellbottoms. A boutade that perhaps can only be done well in her hands, she probed capable of mixing Versace and AC / DC with the tiki-like esthetics and still exit gracefully.

"I turned to see the light. And with it, the color black as part of my happiness"

Black also pervaded the collection of Carlos Díez, who felt "optimistic" after September, when he "hit rock bottom and was thinking very seriously about closing." It was the month in which he presented his career's most colorful and tropical designs, but also the same month in which figures for his business reached record lows. "In October everything redirected itself and I turned to see the light. And with it, the color black and perversion as part of my happiness."

His return to fetishism was accompanied by strange flashes of light that suggested a strange innocence. Stamped with footprints of Converse is in his hands, "a metaphor for love, like someone giving you a kick." Another Basque, Ion Fiz, renounced the froufrou bourgeois in his latest collections and tried to recover the energy that made him the bad boy of Cibeles eight years ago.

Juana Martín always seems unhappy with her previous shows and, for the umpteenth time, began again from scratch. Goodbye flamenco suits, the retro-futurism or the Gypsy style of previous collections. Her last revival came to us in the form of gowns for weddings and baptisms in monochrome tones inspired by the seven deadly sins. Perhaps the path of bland drag will grant her more followers, because her dresses of feathers and rhinestones were the most admirable pieces of hers presented at the show. Enigmas of Cibeles.

In her morning show, Elisa Palomino was inspired by the geisha and actress Sada Yacco, a muse to several Japanese impressionist painters. Dodging predictability, (there are thousand ways to destroy the kimono) she presented feathered embroidery and exquisite sheepskin jackets, granting her designs the needed contemporary feel to a story too often told. Minutes later, the usually solvent Teresa Helbig failed miserably with a dull show.