Pepa Pombo's return to textiles

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News
Oct. 9, 2009
[The story appeared in today's edition of the Global Village supplement]

Fashion designer Pepa Pombo and her daughter Mónica Holguín have been busy lately adding the finishing touches to their ultrafeminine, super-chic, upcoming collection.

Pombo, a favorite on Mexico´s high-end fashion scene for more than two decades, now has boutiques in Bogotá, the United States and Mexico City, along with markets in Paris, Italy, Hungary and Saudi Arabia.

Today, Holguín handles the design and style aspects of the label while Pombo works exclusively with the textures and textiles - her true passion since her fashion beginnings.

This fall´s collection promises to be "very exquisite," Pombo told The News, just days after flying back to Mexico from a trip home to Bogotá.

Taking a turn away from the flowing fabrics and eccentric shapes of her most recent "arobatique" collection, Pombo said the newest line will offer an impeccably close fit with stitched details and 1950s flair.

"You are never going to see anything more divine in your life," she said, alluding to the painstakingly intricate threading that will dazzle the ensemble of dresses, whose collective title has yet to be named.

One particular garment, she added, took six entire months just to embroider. The collection will consequently offer fewer pieces than last season´s to compensate for the meticulous attention to detail.

As if to underscore the contrasts between collections new and past, Pombo traipsed over to the sampling racks and pulled a knee-length violet dress from last season´s 19th-century, circus-inspired theme.

On the dress, tiny, curving ripples flow steadily down, while the bust is covered in petal-like fabric strips - both trademark looks of the simple yet romantic "érobatique" garments. The elegant waves come from Pombo´s handcrafted manipulations of the "cintilla," or silk threads, which creates a sheen and nearly transparent effect.

Pombo then removed a similarly rippled pale pink shawl from a nearby rack, the cloth made of velvety-smooth raw silk, "the finest material that exists," Pombo said.

The wrap, she explained, is part of her latest in-store offering: garments that for the first time have been made not in Bogotá, but here in Mexico City.

The retail collection is comprised of vests, shawls, capes and scarves, all featuring the classically Pepa Pombo undulations and a versatile look perfect for casual daywear or to top off evening cocktail attire.

"It´s important to create, not to copy," she said. " In today´s vocabulary, there is a serious confusion between the two."

But for all the exciting new shapes and designs hung up in the Polanco showroom, Pombo is most enthusiastic about one primordial element - the fabric.

"Textures are very crucial, more so than the design, because they are the start," she said. "Textures are my greatest beginning, my base, my spinal column."

And now that Holguín handles design, Pombo can focus her attention wholeheartedly on textiles.

"When I was creating designs, I always saw the texture as more important than the shape, so I sometimes didn´t know how to make it work," she confessed. "Today, my favorite textures are combinations of fabrics."

Working between Colombia and Mexico, however, has been a much easier feat for the designer.

"The Colombian woman is like the Mexican. They´re very similar," she said.

"I feel that we have this gift of sensibility to call attention to what we wear, and that the most important thing for Latin American women is the sensation of femininity."