Joaquín Trías, creative director of heritage Spanish label Delpozo. Photo courtesy of Delpozo
Creative director Joaquín Trías on bringing heritage Spanish label Delpozo back to life.
It happened swiftly. Creative director Joaquín Trías was in Paris, manning the Autumn/Winter showroom of heritage Spanish label Delpozo, when author, stylist, and creative director Jerry Stafford walked in. Trías toured him around in an intimate presentation, and as they were discussing the collection, Stafford dropped the revelation that he was Tilda Swinton’s personal stylist. “I was like, ‘Wow,’” Joaquín recalls to Vogue Philippines, “because Tilda is an institution.”
A week later, Trías was back in Madrid when Safford called and said that he would drop by Delpozo’s studio the following day. Morning came, and Joaquín found himself looking out the window just as a car pulled into the driveway. The next thing he knew, the Academy Award-winning actress, who was in Madrid filming Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door, was stepping out of the vehicle and into the atelier. “I was like oh my gosh! Everybody in the studio didn’t understand a thing,” Joaquín gushes. “She started fitting everything. And we started talking about gardens and flowers, because her passion is gardens, and she’s Scottish, and she’s built her family house [with] this amazing garden. And I’m like, ‘Tilda, why don’t we bring back Delpozo’s garden to life?’ And she’s like, ‘I would love to do that.’ So we started working on the project.”
Founded in 1974 by designer Jesús del Pozo, Joaquín describes the brand as having been in slumber for the longest time. After del Pozo’s passing in 2011, it was acquired by Perfumes y Diseño (PyD), with the designer Josep Font creatively helming the brand until September 2018. Following Font’s departure, PyD deprioritized its womenswear and menswear lines and focused instead on perfumes. Eventually, Delpozo’s operations became dormant.
Elsewhere in Spain was Joaquín, a designer leading his own eponymous label for nearly a decade, who felt compelled to bring Delpozo back to life. He spent five years gathering investors and solidifying a new direction, and in 2024, they officially acquired and relaunched the brand with the help of PyD, who remains a stakeholder. “Delpozo is a sleeping beauty; we have a sleeping beauty in Spain” Joaquín explains. “It’s our responsibility to put that house back in the world.”
For its reawakening, Delpozo began with the short film Obertura, starring Swinton as The Gardenerette. The protagonist is reborn just as the world around her takes shape—a bleak landscape of soil, rocks, and sprouts transforms into a lush field of tall grass and blooming flowers. “Her humanity and her generosity is extreme,” Joaquín says of the actress, who is garbed in purple and pink jumpsuits from the Spring/Summer 2024 collection throughout the short film.
The project is emblematic of the creative director’s larger goal for Delpozo to function not just as a fashion brand but also as a production house. He elaborates: “We really want to tell stories. It’s about storytelling for us and it’s about all this beauty. It’s very, very important for us to collaborate with these super respected people in the world and try to transmit our stories through them.”
In-house, the team is made up of 12 people, but they’ve forged relationships with the likes of Kate Young, who styles their collections. In making sense of the brand’s identity, Joaquín looked to distinguished houses like Chanel which is characterized by tweed or Bottega Veneta which is known for their woven leather. Delpozo, on the other hand, “has never been classified like that, and creatively, that gives us such a huge opportunity to develop.” According to him, Delpozo’s codes are more than just shapes or certain materials; they’re about a mindset or concept, “the extraordinary everyday.”
The foundations of Jesús del Pozo’s namesake label have always been “extreme beauty and color.” At present, Trías and Young uphold these pillars, but have also taken to throwing around the word “pristine” during their sessions, describing the Delpozo woman as someone who is always impeccable. “Kate and I always laugh and debate and talk about being pristine. Delpozo is pristine. We are pristine. I love that.”
Their Spring/Summer 2024 collection was their first official one under this new era ushered in with Swinton. Previously, the capsule collection they created for A/W 24 was presented in New York, and sold exclusively at Moda Operandi. Inspired by Jesús’ early design codes, they focused on executing color and embroidery but in a much more subtle way. This approach allowed them to hone in on local craftsmanship, which has always been at the center of both Jesús and Joaquín’s visions. “I really think Spain has a lot to say to the world,” the latter says. “I really love my country. I want to transmit that to the world in an extremely elevated way.”
