When Activism Meets Fashion - An Interview with VALADEZ, Cruelty Free and Slow Fashion Brand Owner Juan Luis Valadez

Graduated from the Master’s program in Fashion Design at instituto Marangoni and founder of his eponymous brand "VALADEZ," Juan Luis Valadez is a Mexican designer who creates stories that engage in dialogue and question through textiles; every VALADEZ garment represents a constant pursuit of change: a design that is cruelty free, seasonless, slow-produced, and conscious.

---

Where are you from and where are you currently based?
I’m from Mexico, and I’m based in Guadalajara.


Can you tell us about your career path and what inspired you to enter the fashion industry?
I’ve always been a creative person, so since very little I understood that every space where I could explore creativity was the space for me, and from a very young age I was involved in classes to absorb the knowledge to cultivate my skills.

Then I discovered fashion watching Fashion File with Tim Blanks and a Style with Elsa Klensch where I learned basically all my bases of the understanding of fashion. From there I followed that dream and  went to study a Master in Fashion Design at Istituto Marangoni in Milan where I graduated with honors and then I worked around two years for an emerging brand from New York based in Milan. There I learned the knowledge of the “Made in Italy” and the rigor of doing the things perfectly.Then I started my brand and I’ve been published by Vogue, Grazia, Elle and used by celebrities in Mexico.

When did you realize that fashion and activism needed to merge for you?
It was a long way and I guess it’s also normal to start step by step understanding the world. I’ve always been interested in justice, but from the lockdown everything changed for me and I understood that the world where we are all living is not what we thought it is and there is so much going on behind the scenes. And from there I felt the urge to open a dialogue and protest from my work.

“Ethical payment is also part of the brand because creation can’t be part of exploitation otherwise it is hypocritical to create beauty based on injustice”. -

How and from what philosophy was VALADEZ born?
In the beginning there was not so much of a philosophy but to follow my dream and prove that great fashion could be made in Mexico. It was around 2011 so there was not much going on. Then slowly I started to grow as a person and consequently growing as a designer and starting to incorporate my values to the brand. I’ve been vegetarian for around 10 years so I started focusing on also turning the brand vegetarian. Animals are so important to me, so that is a very important value to respect. Then I focused on being slow fashion and stopped thinking about seasons to cultivate the importance and value of clothes and cherish them and stop the necessity of overconsumption. Then ethical payment is also part of the brand because creation can’t be part of exploitation otherwise it is hypocritical to create beauty based on injustice.

“Words matter and words are the beginning of deconstruction and destruction of anthropocentrism”.

In what way is VALADEZ a vegetarian brand?
I would love to be totally vegan as personally as professionally. But Mexico is still very constrained in options that is still very difficult to change to totally vegan. But it means that I don’t use or consume anything that needed for someone to be killed. And I use the term “someone” because I’m so tired of naming animals as less important than humans and labeling them apart of the meaning of “someone”. Words matter and words are the beginning of deconstruction and destruction of anthropocentrism.

Why do you consider it important to create in an animal-friendly and slow way today?
Because animals must have the same right as humans to live their own lives in peace. They feel, they think, they have families and technically they are our brothers if we consider that we are children of earth. I still find it very disturbing how people can't realize something that obvious and form me that proves how primitive society still is.


What does your creative process consist of?
It is kind of complex, because as a designer or a creative person you have to constantly be curious about everything: fashion, art, architecture, culture, music, politics, sociology…As much as you can be interested in as much as interesting is going to be your process and consecutively your work. So I always try to keep myself immersed in different references and areas and from there it starts every collection. Depending on what in that precise moment I’m curious in.

“We need to create a society where love is not a cliché, but a constant work of humanity”.

Your latest collection is titled “Wake up! Before is too late.” Tell us about it.
Right now we are all living a very dangerous moment in human history. Maybe the most dangerous until now, because we are surrounded by psychopaths that rule the world that can destroy the entire planet with their nuclear weapons. And we are not just facing our own ending with that, we are dealing with climate change, pollution, mass surveillance, genocide, corruption, genetically modified foods, crazy oligarchs and basically a broken society…We need to desperately wake-up! 

I do believe we still have time, very few but still have time to change the extinction of everything. It is our responsibility to inform ourselves, end individualism and end living in a constant numbness, because that makes us complicit of the system. So the collection is inspired by 12 different archetypes from the activist to the celebrity, from the anarchist to the bohemian. All of them totally different but with one thing in common; we are all humans. And we need to start looking at what connects us and stop looking at what divide us and cultivate more bridges and middle points where we all can convey and hopefully that result in a more compassionate society where love is not a cliché, but a constant work of humanity.

Which project do you cherish the most and why?
I think all the projects are special, because each one represents a specific moment in my life, so I couldn’t select only one.

Your design is always characterized by the ability to protest ideas through clothing. How do you achieve this connection?
I try to dissect how the topic that I want to represent can be translated visually. So from there I start a process where I research and start placing the pieces in order to develop the construction of the collection.

How do you see the conscious fashion scene in Mexico? And what can we do to change its trajectory?
I truly believe that it’s not only in Mexico but a global problem on how people in general are not aware of the importance of changing our habits not only in fashion, but in general of this capitalist way of living where your value is how much you consume. That thinking is totally wrong and far away from reality. In fact it is only destroying us. So I perceive that globally we are very behind and very late on being conscious of the importance of sustainability and living more carefully. The first thing and more difficult is deprogramming ourselves from the system and from there is a very individual process to unravel the capitalist chip that has been consuming us.

In recent years, the world has been immersed in a constant state of crisis. What motivates you to continue creating?
My faith, I do believe that also the system has made people walk away from being spiritual because then the only god that people worship is money, things and power. And those things are what make the system survive and that is exactly what took us in this constant state of crisis. The emptiness inside is needed to be filled through things and a lot of people are willing to do anything to fill that feeling including crimes, war and the worst things. And somehow I feel that we need to fight back through what we know to do, so in my case I’m trying to fight back through creativity and fashion. Also I just can’t stand still only watching so much injustices, violence and the ongoing genocide. It’s just not right and you become complicit.

And even if I know that I can’t change the world, the thing that I know is that if we all do our part, we all together can change it. So we need to keep going. Also creating is my therapy and my passion, so it’s a very important part of who I am.

What is your philosophy of life? 
We all have been told that success is quantified on how much you gain, how many things you possess, what brands are you wearing…And it took me many experiences and years to realize that none of that is success and none of that is real happiness. It’s nice to have things, but life can’t be centered on that and our value is not rated on materialism. Right now my philosophy is that success is doing what you like without harming anyone and working on creating a better world for all living beings so we can hopefully reach a place where we all can live in peace and harmony. I have also discovered so much joy in the small things that at the end are the big things, like enjoying nature, being or talking with the people you love, supporting a good cause, and of course having a passion and following your dreams. That now has become my philosophy.

Finally, as creatives we bear the responsibility to create from an ethical place, what advice would you give to new generations of designers?
Be thirsty to seek the truth, only by trying to understand reality and where we are standing we can see the importance of fighting for a better world and when we have the ability to sensitize through knowledge and information that information and those cruel imagines will ignite the feeling to fight back. I recommend to follow “Collective Fashion Justice” and “Slay Film” on social media because they have much information about animals, sustainability and ethical values and watch “The true cost” that is a very raw documentary about who made what we wear and the scandalous way of the new slavery in the fashion industry. And never surrender to create a better world!

To learn more about Juan Luis Valadez, please check out the links below:
Instagram: @valadezofficial
Buy VALADEZ at: @calexicoshowroom