Interview with La Casita De Wendy

April 21, 2009 L&G Studio

I am super excited to share a little story behind the magic of La Casita De Wendy. Thanks to the invention of blogs, I had the pleasure to "meet" Inés & Iván on my blog through L&G blog!

I decided on a whim to contact Inés & Iván to share my love for their clothes. I wanted to find out how I can get my hands on their adorable dresses! (especially the top right, and the dress with the mug prints...actually all of it!!) I also asked them if I could do a blog post about them, and to my delight, Inés & Iván replied kindly and agreed!! I was thrilled that they took the time out of their busy and exciting life to do this. Thanks guys for all your awesomeness!
So, I'm excited to share everything about them and what they do! They make work seem so effortless and life more fun than the Wii! There's too much to talk about and I wouldn't do justice if I didn't share all this goodness with everyone! So be prepared to read a long post!
Inés & Iván are two super talented fashion & textile designers based in Madrid,Spain. (cool!) They often use colors and patterns that are nature inspired and motifs that reference Iberian fairytales. The result is carefree, passionate, romantic,and expressive. In essence, their designs capture the spirit of a fairytale girl living in a modern world...
Their designs are in tons stores around the world including Barneys in New York, Matsuya, Lamp, Koh Samui and Fenwick in London, Surface to Air in Paris, Suite in Barcelona, Deli Room in Madrid, and more. (even cooler!)
The two of them started La Casita De Wendy in 02' and they both actually first got their degrees in architecture. Clothing design started off simply as a hobby, but it's a total meant to be, because it seems that everything just fell into place for them....one word.....Bjork.
Yes, no joke.....Bjork wore their designs for one of her photoshoots for a magazine spread at one point!! (WHAT?!? that's just freaking ridiculously insane cool!) I can't even imagine how I would react if Bjork ever came to me and wore clothes I designed....if that ever happened to me in a million years...I think I would be happy to just dig a grave and bury myself alive...Yeah...since I'm pretty sure that I would probably just freeze and fall into a OH-MY-GOD-BJORK-WORE-MY-CLOTHES-coma for the rest of my life anyways....
Change subject. So here's my first little interview with La Casita De Wendy!
What's the main vision behind La Casita De Wendy?
We want to design beautiful stuff for creative people and we want to be inspired by the greatest beauty of nature.

Both of you hold an architecture degree, so what inspired you both to get into fashion design?

we started to make clothes just like a hobby and because it was difficult to find beautiful designs in Madrid, so we started to sell our collections to friends... and after a few years we realized that we liked designing soooo much that we decided to continue. It was a great help that we had a big success the first time we went to an international trade show and many shops like Barneys in New York wanted our stuff... and Bjork wanted to wear some of our designs...

How did you two meet and how did the teaming up happen?

We met dancing Pulp!! and we start to go out together and that's all... we connected!

What are your main roles in the Company?

Now we have a lot of work so we have to organize ourselves, Inés takes care of the collection, the samples, the sales... and Iván takes care of the production and special events, collaborations, consulting etc...

Where do you get your most inspirations from?

We are inspired by Fairy tales, imagination, painting and of course nature.

Besides your love for fashion, what are some other loves you have?

we love cooking, staying at home, reading, painting and living.

What would your dream studio look like and where would it be?

we love our studio as it is, but we would love to be more in the country, we are doing a vegetables garden in our backyard and we dream about having a big garden in the mountains and being able to work from there...

So, I found out after the interview that besides all the amazing things they do designing clothes and textile...it ALSO turns out that Inés & Iván have started teaching fashion workshop called El Estudio!! They teach fashion workshops right from their atelier with students from all over Spain, Britain and beyond! They teach them everything from creating their own sketch/inspiration book, to creating their own line, to branding, to ways to start their business! So by the end of the 16 week course, the students themselves can achieve their dream of designing their own line! You can see lots of great process photos from their El Estudio blog, too. I love seeing all the rich watercolor drawings and inspirations.
God! I so want to take off and live in Madrid for 4 months and take that workshop! (I'm talking to you God....can you make this happen?? it can count as my birthday present!)

Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing about them!
Okay, gotta go and figure out a plan to live/work/study in Madrid now since God isn't responding to me....I can never count on that guy!

You can also read their blog to read more about their inspiring lifestyle! If you can't read Spanish like me, use the handy google translate to read their site!....I don't know what I'd do if google didn't exist. Cheers!