Written by Iris te Wieske

‘’The contemporary man dares to be more feminine and adventurous in how he presents himself. Why should girls have all the fun? We boys like to dress up to, and there is nothing wrong with that.’’

Born in Chile and raised in Sweden, the career of menswear designer Felipe Rojas Llanos started while studying fashion at Central Saints Martins, from which he graduated with an MA collection in 2010. The patterns created for this collection were not common in menswear, as Felipe explains. “What I design is not something I would say is ‘trendy’, the clothes are more timeless in the way that you could probably wear them five years from now without feeling they have dated.” The show was a big success, and so Felipe’s collection was picked by the iconic fashion boutique Browns, which has in the past introduced great talent such as John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, and Christopher Kane.

Shiny fabrics, structured shapes and his couture-like attention to detail characterize his collections, and make each piece luxurious yet highly wearable. According to Felipe, his background plays an important role in his design process. ‘’I think a lot of my calmness comes from the fact that I grew up in Sweden. I had a very difficult time being part of a loud Latin family and I think the contrast of these two cultures really left a trace in me that has helped me view things differently. The trick is to keep an open mind, which is sometimes hard to do in this society.’’

Most important while looking for inspiration and designing, is his mindset. ‘’I got where I am by not over thinking my ideas. That’s when you kill creativity, by turning it into logic. There is a fine line that gets crossed too often when creating. We all have a gut instinct that we forget to listen to. Creation is more about making than thinking, that’s why some people are better at it then others.’’

He always played with the idea of designing womanswear, but it was an exhibition at the V&A called Radical Fashion where he discovered what creative designers could really accomplish. The exhibition showed the talents of inter alia Westwood, McQueen and Yamamoto, but it was Hussein Chalayan that really amazed Felipe by the way he mixed architecture and design and sparked something in him.

Nowadays there is nothing else he’d rather do. ‘’The world of fashion can be wonderful and poisonous at the same time. It’s brutal and exciting and at the end, a business. I can romanticize it or talk bad about it, but for me as a designer it is an output of expressing myself in an artistic way and I love that. It is a business to sell your ideas; you can set your own aims. It is hard, and there is much talent out there, but that is great because it is important to push the boundaries.’’

The future of menswear looks bright if we can believe Felipe. ‘’Menswear will continue to evolve and become more open minded, which is something that I’m very pleased with. The contemporary man dares to be more feminine and adventurous in how he presents himself. Why should girls have all the fun? We boys like to dress up to, and there is nothing wrong with that.’’