Celestino Sustainable Fashion At Project Runway

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

After Sebastián Gray became the first Latino to win Project Runway (Bravo), the fashion program that premiered its eighteenth season yesterday has this time a designer of Mexican origin who, in addition to making two collections of Pret à Porter and Haute couture exclusively based on recycled fabric, seeks to convey a clear political, ethical, environmental and social message with each stitch. We spoke with the creative brain behind the brand, Sergio Celestino Guadarrama, and his partner and right-hand man Kade Johnson, about his unique vision and future plans from his studio in the New York Seaport District. Keep his name!

"When I was 4 years old, my mother thought I was crazy when I asked her for a leather raincoat," recalls the designer from Austin, Texas, who spent his early years in Acuña, Mexico. “At that time I started to play knitting, I didn't even know what it was to be a designer. […] My first fabrics were my grandmother's underwear. You already know that Latin grandmothers don't throw anything away!”

Curiously, one of the most characteristic features of his firm today is that he works exclusively with recycled fabrics, all kinds of high-quality fabrics that are left over to large firms in Paris, New York and around the world.

"We want to focus on the sustainable, social and creative aspect [of fashion], giving humanity back," explains the designer. "It is the mentality of the mass market that is ending creativity and the entire industry […] Buying cheap [clothing] and throwing it away is killing the planet, and then sending the clothing to poor countries where it destroys economies local".

Guadarrama completely dissociates itself from that model, manufacturing all its garments in New York and controlling each part of the process, from start to finish. An approach he refers to as "being a 360 designer."

"Many people do not realize how polluting this industry is and the number of people who take advantage of it in the process of creating a garment and they do not teach it to you at university either," he acknowledges. “When I opened my eyes to these injustices that are happening in my industry, I decided that I had to make a change, get the message across and be a standard for other designers.

Politics and social issues are so important to him that they even represent a large part of his creative process on an aesthetic level. As he himself tells us, every day he sits down to work listening to radio programs about politics and channels it through what he knows best: designing clothes.

“To create the dress we made for [actor] Billie Porter at the Tony's, I discussed with him the laws that were being passed in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi about women's reproductive rights at the time […] We embroidered a womb in the back of the look, which caught the attention of the press and dubbed it "the womb-dress," he recalls. "When we do red carpet looks we want it to be with people who understand these messages and want to use their voices to support a good cause."

The dress is made from the curtains on the curtain of Billy Porter's latest performance in the hit musical Kinky Boots. “We did it thanks to an association called Scenery Bags, which buy the curtains and make bags with them. With the money they earn they send children who cannot afford them to theater classes and we donate the dress to a museum so that they can continue telling a story,”she says.

You can find her ready to wear and sewing lines on her website celestinocouture.com and follow her steps on Project Runway every Thursday at 9:30/8:30 in Bravo.