Welcome to The Director’s Cut, an interactive column featuring fashion, beauty and career advice from RGNN Director and Founder, @isabelevabohrer.
One for the books, literally. Devota & Lomba, the brand owned by Modesto Lomba, showed its upcoming collection, titled “La Biblioteca,” inside the library at the Ateneo de Madrid today.
Just last month, Lomba was awarded a Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts by King Felipe VI of Spain. In fashion, Lomba has always specialized in haute couture and ready-to-wear pieces, as well as designing costumes for national ballet and theatre shows. In fact, it was Lomba, who along with a series of other designers, created the Asociación Creadores de Moda de España (ACME, the Association of Fashion Creators of Spain) in 1998, playing a critical role in the way forward for the Spanish fashion industry.
Lomba founded Devota & Lomba back in 1986 alongside architect José Luis Devota. Devota passed away in 1993, but his architectural legacy still remains in the brand’s DNA; “to speak about Devota & Lomba is to converse about Architecture made Fashion,” affirms the brand’s slogan. And pure lines, perfect cuts, innovative patterns, and sophisticated minimalism were once again at the heart of the fall/winter 2024 collection shown today.
In fact, in homage to the Spanish designer, President Pedro Sánchez and Begoña Gómez, his wife, attended today’s show, too. Begoña Gómez has always been a loyal supporter of Spanish fashion brands, and it has become a tradition for her to see the upcoming collections alongside her husband.
She was wearing one of Devota & Lomba beautiful designs – from afar, it looks like two pieces; a sleeveless top with a peplum detail and black palazzo wide-leg pants. Get close-up and you’ll see it is actually a clean-cut jumpsuit, a vision of elegance that Devota & Lomba is so well-known for.
The calm piano score started, and soft knits and wide-leg pants in heathered grey and bright green, and a midi knit dress in bright Barbie pink, gave way to cropped jackets, in Spain known as chaquetas toreras, or bullfighting jackets, topped over floral maxi dresses. In true library fashion, some models carried Devota & Lomba bags, while others toted books, wrapped together with a belt-like strap, as if they were bags in themselves.
Zoom in – some of the models toted books, tied together by a belt-like strap | Photo credit: RGNN.org
The more every-day pieces were then succeeded by sequin party dresses in violet and black with silver undertones. While Begoña Gómez opted for classic black pumps to style her Devota & Lomba jumpsuit, all runway models wore flat, beige moccasins. At the end, Lomba himself came out to salute the audience in a bright Barbie pink sweater and heathered grey pants, the same colors his models had worn only minutes before.
Thank you, Madrid es Moda, for inviting us.
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