You cross the doors of this place in Gràcia and you wonder if you have stumbled upon one of the entrances to the past of the ‘Ministry of Time’. Everything indicates that it is a ‘retail’ store: open spaces, clothes on hangers and shelves full of varied ‘looks’. But, in that sea of clothing, unlike the captain of the Titanic with the iceberg, you see something that catches your eye. A string of sewing machines shows you that the newly opened cus (Seneca, 8) is far from being a Zara and has much more in common with the textile shops of the last century.
Is a nostalgic proposalit is bring back the tradition that each store had its own workshop & rdquor ;, explains Adriana Zalacainfounder and designer of cus. But this new initiative does not respond to the ‘vintage’ fashion and to recover the customs of our grandparents, that bandwagon that so many ‘influencers’ have jumped on. But it is a bet in favor of the sustainability through a practically unexplored model in Barcelona that she herself baptizes as “radical transparency”.
This method “consists in you can monitor every single step in which your clothes are created & rdquor ;, defines Adriana. Here, unlike the works on Génova Street, everything is transparent: from the moment you arrive and they show you the models that they themselves have created, until they make it on their own sewing machines and you take it home.
It is another of the key points of his proposal. “If we don’t have what you like, we’ll make it for you,” says the founder. That you like that jacket, but your size isn’t there? They do it to you. That you like the shape of one blouse, but the fabric of another? They adapt it to you. They never have too much ‘stock’, another great key point of their sustainable program: not to produce for production’s sake, but to create the right and necessary garments, all for reduce textile waste that in the mass fashion industry are counted in tons.
And although the store is new (“we have one month openY our workshop just one year”, Adriana points out), the brand is of the first of ‘sustainable fashion’ of Barcelona and Catalonia, before the ‘boom’ of a couple of years ago. They started almost a decade ago, inspired by the sustainable fashion that was so popular then in central Europe. Since then, he has been building a name until he has landed in the capital.
Now, his store is not only the epitome of sustainable fashion, both in terms of materials, processes and transparency, but it is also a multipurpose space Available for all kinds of activities. For example, the store is open from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, but in the mornings the workshop is accessible so that anyone can visit their creation processes and, thus, immerse themselves in a illustrative historical journey of how the clothing workshops of pre-Inditex Barcelona worked.
In addition to being Greta Thunberg’s textile paradise, Cus uses its spaces to Cultural events related to fashion and sustainability. In recent months, among others, they have presented the new collections through artistic and literary performances, such as the act in which a poet recited her texts wearing Adriana’s designs.
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In case you want to write it down on your agenda, the next event, although without an exact date, is scheduled for when the heat arrives, ahead of the summer solstice, and will consist of a small artistic film forum about sustainable fashion and the designs that the brand has been developing over the last decade. It is clear that in the activities of cus there is no stitch without thread.