Luis Fernandez's atelier in the heart of Seville's historic district hums with activity as customers flock to experience his captivating collection of flamenco dresses. Each dress boasts vibrant fabrics adorned with lavish ruffles and playful polka dots, enticing all who behold them.
Flamenco fashion hits its annual peak in springtime when towns and cities across Spain's southern Andalusia region hold their annual weeklong ferias when everyone puts on their finery to go out and eat, drink and dance into the wee hours.
The most traditional design, which dates back more than 100 years, is a floor-length dress that is closely fitted to the thigh, fishtailing out in a ruffled skirt and matching ruffles on the sleeves.
To complement the dress, women accessorize, wearing a fringed shawl around the shoulders, earrings and bracelets, their hair pulled up in a bun and pinned with a comb with a single flower in an ensemble that has become the image of Andalusia and even used abroad as a symbol of Spain.
A Seville native who grew up loving the fair, Fernandez started working as a designer in 2012 alongside fellow couturier Manuel Jurado, and from the start, he knew he wanted to make flamenco dresses.
For him, it is a unique regional costume "that evolves with fashion and the only one which incorporates new trends," he said with pride.
The garment has its roots in so-called "majo" costumes "worn by working-class people" in Spain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and often captured in the paintings of Spanish master Goya, explained anthropologist Rosa Maria Martinez Moreno, who wrote a book called "El Traje de Flamenca ("The Flamenco Dress").
With the start of the Seville fairs in the middle of the 19th century, the style began to be adopted by the wealthy classes at a time when there was a pushback against all things French, including its aristocratic fashions.
Thrown into the mix was the dress of the Roma women who sold doughnuts at the fair and who wore dresses and skirts adorned with ruffles.
By the 20th century, the flamenco dress had evolved into its current form and became popular, thanks largely to the growth of flamenco as an art form and the expansion of schools teaching this Andalusian dance form, which women often learn to perform at the fairs, Martinez Moreno said.
Image of Spain
During the 1960s, the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco set out to "sell Spain as a tourist attraction" and to do so used "popular stereotypes" such as the flamenco dress which "began to be recognized as the image of Spanishness" abroad, she added.
In recent years Andalusian dress has inspired big-name designers such as Christian Dior, who in 2022 showcased a new collection in Seville's iconic Plaza de Espana.
Fernandez said the sector in Seville has become more professional with designers who follow "the trends from Paris and Milan," and who have since 1995 staged a yearly international flamenco fashion show in the city.
An outfit from an atelier like the one Fernandez runs can range from several hundred euros to over one thousand.
But there are cheaper options today in an era where fashion has become more accessible.