We reveal the secrets of “L’ornament”, the first and long-awaited collection of the Catalan firm.
Life is an unstoppable force and that frenetic feeling can be felt even more in the daily life of any big city. From dawn to dusk we all move through the cities like dancers in a beautiful performance, trying to fulfill our dreams, satisfy desires or simply arrive home safe and sound. Fashion and dance, in an imperceptible way for many, share an intrinsic link simply because each and every one of us is alive and in motion. Ugo Boulard, an acclaimed and well-known dancer, has decided to take the link between dance and fashion to the next level thanks to an extensive career in the dance industry. Boulard delicately but with the power comparable to a somersault brings together art and style in each of his unmistakably urban garments. “L’ornament”, his first collection shows that fashion is living a golden age, the age of creatives without fear of throwing themselves on stage.
Ugo, it’s a pleasure to talk to you. I would like to go back to your childhood, the period in which you discovered your passion for hip hop, something that would later influence you artistically. Tell me, what is the first memory you keep related to that musical genre?
It is a pleasure to be able to answer your questions. Thank you very much for taking an interest in the project. I must tell you that more than a memory of that musical genre, I think I would define it as a clash with the Hip Hop culture through movement. I entered a dance school when I was 6 years old, a place that has marked me and has created much of the path I have walked to get here. That’s where I started to find out what Hip Hop was, what its musical genre was, its dances, its styles, and everything that forms it. That’s where I met my life partners. This is why I believe everything started through movement and form.
Vicki Baum used to say that “in life, there are shortcuts to happiness and dancing is one of them” and that makes me want to ask you, does fashion lead to that same destiny?
It always depends on how you take it, my first promise to myself in life is to work on something that I love. I think that, when you know how to make all this a kind of spiral of motivation and learning, this directly secretes a lot of happiness. When I see a finished pattern, I project it, I build it and I get to the point of seeing the final garment made, this whole process generates a thousand moments of happiness and euphoria. Seeing your dreams become physically accurate is like beating levels, and who isn’t happy to beat a level and collect the XP (laughs).
I’m curious, what have you learned from dance, and what have you learned from fashion during all these years?
Of dance I have learned thousands of things because I have been in the industry for a long time, I believe that in the end, the body is the means by which all values are expressed, but when it comes to fashion I think I’ve learned how to have full body awareness and be able to modify today’s canons. When I talk about body awareness, it is obviously a very big issue, but I could say that thanks to dance I have understood that I want to dance in the clothes I make, not literally, but to walk in them in different ways that conveys the cut and shapes of each of the pieces. This will come when we hit the runaways, of course! I think I still have a lot to learn about fahsion. But I would emphasize that it is the perfect means to be able to elevate the aesthetics of the human body, I say elevate because an undressed body is already aesthetic itself, all the forms that are created with the body are already precious, from Coco Rocha, Akram Khan or Chey Jurado and thousands of others. They are bodies that shine by themselves, but with fashion and clothing, one more story can be added to them and explained a lot. Fashion and movement have always gone hand in hand. Another thing that I have learned about fashion is that it is a beautiful changing industry with many faces, in which I want to situate myself and project myself in the face of being a creator who can tell stories through his fabrics and creations and not a simple brand that generates material. This is going to be difficult but I am full of energy to make it possible.
At what point would you say that fashion imposed itself on your life to dedicate a whole new professional path to it?
One day I was preparing a shoot for a dance creation that I did with a partner. It was my first duo and dance company co-directed by my partner and myself, so the project was totally ours. We wanted to develop a more cinematographic part of the dance piece, so we put together a good production. I remember that a stylist came to dress the whole movie (Thabata). She brought us super crazy shapes and that at that time I had never seen, she passed me many brand references and information. Since that day I have not stopped looking and looking and searching and becoming more and more interested in the industry… Aesthetics was already beginning to eat up my whole head and I needed to know more. Some time later, Leïti introduced me to a creative studio, where I met ByLeguard, we became super colleagues and he taught me how to play a sewing machine. I learned the basics, every day I studied a little more about how it worked based on trial and error. Everything started to go a little better and I got better feedback from people, so this gave me a lot of motivation to make sure I kept going. I think that at this moment I knew that I wanted to dedicate many more years to this and that I saw myself in the future having things to say about this world. I think that the support of my colleagues (Cutemobb) who at this moment were also throwing themselves blindly into their own thing gave me a lot of security, jumping into the pool with a group is different than doing it alone… and look, step by step it is coming out . Thanks to my family.
What would you say BOULARD has that no other brand has?
It is very complicated nowadays to have this meritocracy. I think that Boulard has a very unique value and it is that of being able to draw on real and sensitive experiences that are reflected directly/ indirectly in the creations. In other words, I want the public to be able to let themselves be surprised in two ways as they get to know the brand. First with the aesthetic product, the techniques, the way of doing it, and the materials that make it up. Then, as the public understands and enters into the history of the brand, they will be able to find that in each item of clothing there is a hidden story related to the life of the creator (that if a seam is like that, it is because there is something behind it, that if a button is here, it is for something). Only in this way can each garment in each collection be understood 100% and interrelate the concept behind it. This means that the public can have their share of the work of searching and feel that they have passed another level by finding something that not everyone may know. They are the two sides of clothing, the aesthetic and the conceptual, shapes, and manners.
Now it’s time to present the first BOULARD collection entitled “L’ornament”, start to take shape?
I decided to start creating this collection thanks to a three-quarter sample jacket that I made a few days before the great COVID lockdown (I shit on everything still talking about covid, my goodness…) This garment gave me enormous confidence to start telling myself – ok, now I’m going to do something with more than one piece of clothing and make sense. The truth is that it went extremely well for me to be able to lock myself up to create, and I also escaped to go to the studio and be able to think, draw and start doing. I didn’t expect to be able to get to this point two and a half years later…or that it would be so long. But it is that during all this period, I have learned, rethought, changed and ended up drawing conclusions that have led me to make this a universe and a collection. I am grateful that it has been so long because now I know how to make a collection and I have learned everything.
Tell me about the title of the collection, where does it come from?
Actually, the title of the collection was going to be something else… This is one more secret behind the collection, but hey, I’ll tell you. The first title was going to be “Le coup de Fouet”, the word means a similarity to floral motifs, artistically it marks the predominance of the curve over the straight line, a term typical of the Modernist style (where the entire collection). What happens is that in French it sounds super good, but said in Catalan or Spanish it didn’t quite sound good to me at all. This is why this is where I make the whole theme of aesthetics/meaning work… In its pure aesthetics, I have put “L’Ornament” it works very well, in the end, it is a word that defines the entire collection very briefly (a composition that serves to beautify objects or people), and that at the same time summarizes the whole shape of our city, but behind it, there is much more meaning, as the voice-over of the trailer says >> A desire to be much more than a composition to beautify…>> .
What values would you say are those on which BOULARD stands?
There are a series of super important values. The experiences, experiences, and spirituality to be able to get all the information and inspiration from there. The work, motivation, and interest, all this is what generate the energy to push the machine forward, especially the work, I love working like a bastard and the people who work like crazy. Then, create a team, a family, I don’t want to run a brand by myself, I think that working as a team is a value that I have always carried, whether in dance companies or in a clothing brand, but it is something that freaks me out, I have a thousand things to learn from my team (the best example is César, with whom I have been able to have the honor of working on all the graphic material of the brand and with whom I never stop learning… what would I do without him omg…) The last ingredient is the connection between artists, they have taught me that if you want something to be seen, you have to make it rise among all of us, that is, we have to raise the image of fashion in Spain, well, what better than to connect with each designers, musicians, photographers and support each other as God intended… Only in this way can we make people outside the country turn their heads and freak out about what is happening in Spain. It’s already past that of marking your land and that nobody enters because you or that one is my competition… That doesn’t work. (You know what I’m saying?) These are the main ingredients of BOULARD.
You say that BOULARD seeks to contribute a message to change a part of the world. Could you tell me what that message is?
I think that this message is still brewing inside me, this first collection has made me know that I have the potential to be able to contribute a concept that moves people’s interiors.. I think that as the brand grows and people get to know me, this message will be generated that is very attached to my values. What I do know is that I want to change many things and bring light.
What exactly does the term “Savoir-Sentir” with which BOULARD defines itself?
“Savoir-Sentir” is the spiritual and emotional part of “Savoir Faire”. I mean that in my brand, there is no technique without prior emotion. That is to say that in the projection of my creations I want each garment, work or result to be at the same level both technically and sensitively. That there is the same weight of quality and emotional concept. It’s a bit like what I was saying before, I want the hidden story behind the clothes to be as curated as the garment is going to be.
Your brand enjoys a deep connection with the city of Barcelona. Tell me about the relationship that exists between BOULARD and the Catalan capital.
Barcelona is where I come from, where I walk and where I breathe. In my eyes, it’s a wonderful free city and you can see this in its architecture, damn, you just need to walk around the city to feel how different it is, it has a focus full of energy and everyone knows that it’s a perfect platform for creative development. In order to make the entire collection I have walked and
walked everywhere, suddenly you look up and see all those curves, those ornaments, those buildings like Casa Sayrach, Casa Comalat, Casa Batlló, Casa de les Punxes and thousands more and you teleport in its golden age (I consider it to be between 1888 and 1929, the height of the Modernist era), when making my own theories and ideas, all the artists were connected, there was money for development, the city was fashionable and everyone from outside spoke of it, the reform of the Plà Cerdà was carried out, there were incredible ideas… All this is a parallelism with which I feel identified today when I walk through my city. I feel that many artists have this discourse of wanting to move forward, of wanting to find people who invest, of making Barcelona magical again like that time. Maybe it’s not like that, but the energy of the people I hang out with is so magical and I think we’re on the right track. We just need to remove those people who are above us and who do not help make this possible, but little by little. <3
As a designer, do you have influences that can be perceived in your creations?
Of course !!! Much !! There are some garments that are even like versions in my own way of garments characteristic of references that I have been able to have throughout the creative process. For example, the silk look of the Squirrel, has a super clear reference to Charaf and his silk at Casa Blanca, which I respect very much for its precision with elegance. It was a perfect garment to fit the cover of the book with the story of the Squirrel. Then there are all the less visible references that are part of the small stories of each garment, whether the public likes to find them or not 😉
What would you like someone to feel when they wear one of your garments for the first time?
Well, on the one hand, I would love for them to take away this sensation of putting on a garment and looking incredibly handsome, that they love the fit and that they enter into this aesthetic/formal value of each piece. On the other hand, I would love for you to take away the summary of what I have been explaining a
little in this interview. That each person who wears a garment of mine can learn and enter the universe of the brand every time they find out how the garment is made and what is behind it. It would be like my biggest dream, that people would start playing the “easter-egg” game with my clothes because there will be more and more and it will be funnier to play.
For more ugoboulard.com + @ugo.boulard
