Esteban Cortazar burst into fashion as a wunderkind – quite literally, as he was just 18 when the Colombia-born, Miami-raised designer showed his collection at New York Fashion Week, and 23 when he was named creative director of Ungaro and relocated to Paris.
With those two chapters behind him, the CFDA Member has since been quietly but effectively rebuilding his eponymous collection out of Paris, where he has been based for the past eight years. For the past four seasons, he has shown the collection during Paris Fashion Week to much acclaim.
“It’s been a very spontaneous, very destiny-driven experience,” Cortazar said of his creative trajectory between castings at his Rue de Rivoli offices. “I was in New York, then I came to Paris specifically to work for Ungaro. After that finished, my instinct said, ‘I need to stay in Paris.’ I was very happy here personally. I felt I wanted to really build the vision here and so I decided to stick it out and stay. I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy ride because the level here is so high. The end the brands that show here are really established.”
Cortazar grew up in Miami’s South Beach in the early 1990s, a time when the area became a fashionable hub with residents Madonna and Gianni Versace and photographers like Patrick Demarchelier and Herb Ritts on the beaches photographing the era’s supermodels. It was the late Kal Ruttenstein of Bloomingdale’s who discovered Cortazar and cultivated his talent.
Paris has had a major effect on his fashion philosophy.
“Working with Ungaro made me understand so much about craftsmanship, and Europe just connected to my spirit,” he said. “I am half-English, my grandmother is French. After Ungaro, Natalie Massenet at Net-a-Porter.comstarted pushing me. We did a capsule collection for Net-a-Porter which eventually led me to open the distributions and keep it going.”
Today, he sells to a global network of stores, including Barneys New York, Bergdorf Goodman, The Webster, Forty Five Ten, Holt Renfrew and Lane Crawford.
The fall-winter collection, to be unveiled Monday evening, is inspired by a recent trip to Berlin and the sexual energy that pulses through the German capital.
“I was very inspired by the shameless sexual freedom,” he said. “That led me, for example, to study the intricacies of a jock strap and see how that could be become this feminine dress or feminine top. There is also the juxtaposition of freedom and restriction: things that feel very free and open and voluminous and flamboyant in a certain way but at the same time precise.”
Paris may be where his mind is at the moment, but the designer is not about to commit to the city for life. “I am happy here and just got an apartment,” he said. “But New York is very much in my heart. The influence that it has given me will always stay. There’s Miami, and I was born in Columbia so Columbia also has a presence all the time. It’s about finding a balance.”
