December 14, 2022 |
News flash: we’ve all caught the Y2K bug. Everywhere you look, there are low-slung jeans, velour tracksuits and sparkly, barely-there party dresses.
Before you go complaining that fashion’s stuck in a noughties spiral, our collective love of all things 2000s has enticed new, mass appeal around brands who first made their mark after the turn of the millennium. And we’re here for it.
From Ugg through to Juicy Couture and Blumarine, a wealth of labels synonymous with the decade of all things gaudy are being discovered by an entirely new generation of shoppers.
Designer Esteban Cortázar is shaping up to be the next name to stake his claim as a Y2K goliath. Showcasing his debut collection at NYFW in 2002, the then 17-year-old designer arrived with a hedonistic parade of bandeau maxi dresses, liquid-y mini skirts and low-rise bikinis, all drenched in sun-kissed yellows and aqua blues. The designer grew up on Miami Beach, with the city’s clubbing scene shaping his creative handwriting at the time.
Worn by everyone from Beyoncé to Kim Cattrall and Paris Hilton, the collection’s standout looks have been revived by Farfetch as part of the e-tailor’s Farfetch Beat initiative, which releases exclusive products to global audiences. Everything from chiffon mini-dresses through to beaded bikini belts would make an ideal wardrobe for any Y2K baddie looking to live it up large once summer rolls around, accessorised with a mojito, of course.
Before we start planning our outfits for our big July holibobs, we caught up with Cortázar to talk through the collection’s revival.
How did the Farfetch Beat project come about?
It’s a really special project that happened in a quite natural way. One day last summer I realised it had been 20 years since that show. I was in Ibiza, and I started showing a lot of my girlfriends the collection and they started kind of freaking out with the clothes and the dresses, telling me they need to come back. We started having a conversation about how early 2000s fashion was coming back, so I thought this is a perfect moment to kind of bring these looks back.
I’ve had a relationship with Farfetch for several years. And Holly Rogers [Farfetch’s Chief Brand Officer] has been a supporter and a friend of mine for many years. I caught up with Holly, and I was telling her about how I was thinking about how cool would it be to bring these dresses back and she loved it. So we started putting the project together.
You unveiled the project during Miami Art Basel, how was that?
We thought, you know, how better to celebrate the collection than during Art Basel? Miami is the place where I grew up, the collection is inspired by the city because that’s where I was when I designed it. It was really a great place to come back to and have a very big full circle moment. I think in order to really move forward, sometimes it’s good to go back to that initial, spontaneous, pure moment that we have as young creatives.
What was Miami like at the time you were making the collection?
There was a lot going on. I was so young, I did the Oprah show and all these things that just felt so crazy at the time were happening. I was going out a lot, I was a club fixture in many ways in Miami. I was befriending a lot of people and being part of that scene. It was pre-internet in many ways, you didn’t have phones and you didn’t have social media in those environments, so it made it very fun. I grew up in South Beach, Miami, with all the glitz. It was inspiring me a lot. I just remember my confidence, it was a moment that was just very pure, very glam and very, very fun.
How do you feel about the Y2K resurgence?
I wasn’t expecting it. I started seeing all these trends come back during pandemic, that’s when things got really sexy. The 2000s were a really fun time for fashion, stars weren’t afraid to really go all out. I feel like at the time there was a lot of people that criticised fashion for coming across tacky, but that’s what was fun about it. Noughties fashion is irreverent. I don’t love everything about [the Y2K revival], but it’s nice to see it come back in a new way because everything’s always reinterpreted.
But with this collection, I didn’t want to reinterpret it. I wanted to do exactly the same pieces, because when I saw them, they they felt so fresh and so pure. The update that happened was the quality of course, and the cut, because my eye is sharper now than it was 20 years ago.
I think that fashion likes to move forward so quickly. This was a nice exercise to also revisit ideas and not let ideas die so quickly.
You had your fair share of famous faces who wore the collection at the time, who were some of your highlights?
When you see Beyoncé, for her first solo album, wearing two looks from my very first collection, you know, that really is like pop view music history. And of course Paris Hilton, she was the first person that ever wore my clothes. She supported me from from the moment we met. I was a teenager partying with her and having fun. All those times obviously are always in my heart.
The collection’s hues were a standout. Where did you look for colour inspiration?
I grew up on front of the Eighth Street Beach on South Beach, Miami, looking at gorgeous turquoise and fluorescence yellows and beautiful, gorgeous different tones of aqua. Whether it was from a palm tree or beautiful, clear Caribbean water, the sand, or the fluorescent bikinis on the girls. The colour palette is fresh and hot, but also very feminine. Very Miami. Very Latina. That’s what I was feeling. The girls were wearing stripper shoes I got from a local place, they had wet hair and glossy turquoise eyeshadow – that was the vibe. It was also the time all the Brazilian supermodels were coming into the scene. The Gisele moment. They were my girls. my inspirations. The way they walked. That was a big fashion influence for me.
How has revisiting your debut collection inspired your next ventures?
I’m really loving my freedom at the moment. During the pandemic, I stopped releasing collections every season. I had to reshape a lot of things to make decisions that were the best for the business and for me, but as the years have gone by, I really like the creative freedom to just work on special projects. As I continue maturing, I realise that I love a kind of a nomadic lifestyle. I like spending time in Miami and I like spending time in Paris and I also like spending time in Ibiza because it’s a place that really inspires me a lot. I like being close to my family and being in Colombia. So for me, it’s about incorporating all of these places into the next chapter and really building on everything we’ve created in the past 20 years.
Buy Esteban Cortazar’s Farfetch Beat collection here.
