By Jesse ScotOn 8th of June in the Sorbonne, Juana Martín unveiled “Fervor” - her AW25-26 haute couture collection. A procession of silhouettes walked to music threaded with Andalusian motifs, evoking the rhythm of a religious march. Among attendees: stylist Virginie Darbon and tech entrepreneur Madison Zhao.
Martín drew on the deep traditions of Semana Santa celebrations in Andalusia, which is of the most intense, emotionally charged, and artistically rich expressions of Catholic devotion in the world. But whether the deeply religious communities who uphold these traditions would recognize themselves in this stylized reinterpretation is uncertain, as the collection blurred reverence with rupture.
Black ruán, the traditional cloth of Nazarene tunics, dominated the palette, punctuated with white and gold (Look 8, Look 9, Look 21). Halos hovered above the heads, but they crowned women instead of saints (Look 2). For the first look, a Christ-like figure made of ropes appeared not on a cross but on a female body, which could have taken by surprise an unprepared viewer (Look 1). Other models were walking in elegant gowns, cloaked in carcass-like constructions, wrapped in rope, or veiled in petals, which carry rich symbolic resonance of purity and beauty (Look 17, Look 22, Look 24). Accessories resembling thorned branches adorned shoulders and hands as if these relics were reimagined as statement pieces (Look 18). The garments, sculptural and architectural, echoed both sorrow and power.
“We wanted to transmit the emotion, the soul of the tradition,” Martín explained after the show. Based in Córdoba, Juana Martín’s atelier employs twenty-five artisans and produces everything in Andalusia, reviving local techniques while going hand in hand with modern sustainability innovations. Throughout her career, Juana Martín created exceptional pieces for celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Rossy de Palma and Águeda López, and developed relationships with ambassadors such as Israel Fernández and Estrella Morente. Some of the new appreciators of the brand include the model Lara Cosima and the singer Roy Wang. Honored this year with Spain’s National Fashion Design Prize, Martín remains the only Spanish woman (and first Roma designer) in the official Paris Haute Couture calendar.
