Ana Locking
Ana Locking is a prêt-à-porter firm founded in Madrid in 2008.
Ana’s love of fashion emerged at an early age in the best school for a fashion designer, her mother’s dressmaking studio, where she grew up among patterns and fabrics. This had a subconscious influence on her future development and expertise in the fashion world. Ana studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, where she worked on her visual approach to the world and developed her passion for beauty, quality and creativity. Her consistency and passion for art and fashion underpin her belief in the importance of equal opportunities through determination and hard work to make dreams come true. This universal, timeless wish to make dreams come true is something with which Ana identifies and which defines her entire life experience.
Ana Locking is a firm committed to fusing craftsmanship and experimentation, linked to conceptual ideas and that pays attention to detail, always with a view to practicality. The concept of each collection is a manifestation of the inspiration drawn by Ana from her vision of contemporary art, youth culture and personal experiences from her own life.
The materials and fabrics for each collection are carefully selected and created to make garments with an emphasis on quality tailoring. The juxtaposition of hand-crafted details, quality fabrics and experimental design are the hallmarks of this firm.
Ana Locking has played a key role in revitalising Spanish fashion in recent years.
She won best designer at MBFWM (Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Madrid) with her first collection, which established her as one of the most exceptional talents on the Spanish fashion scene. Ana Locking has won the L'Oréal Paris Awards for the Best Collection at MBFWM on two occasions, the Marie Claire Grand Prix for the Designer of the Year, the Cosmopolitan FFF for the Best Spanish Designer of the Year, the Medalla al Mérito en las Bellas Artes (Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts) of Castile-La Mancha, among others.
Apart from her work as a fashion designer, Ana continues to explore the art world, collaborating with different cultural institutions and arts organisations nationally and globally in exhibitions, installations, video art, photography, seminars, lectures and master classes. Ana Locking has worked with the following institutions: Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS); Museo de Arte Moderno de Castilla-León (MUSAC); Instituto de Arte Moderno de Valencia (IVAM); Museo de Arte Moderno de Salamanca (DA2); Museo del Traje, Madrid; Casa de America de Madrid; Canal de Isabel II de Madrid; Instituto de la Juventud de Madrid (INJUVE); Galería La Fábrica de Madrid, the New York Public Library, among others.
Not only does Ana work to develop her creativity in the fashion and art worlds, since 2011 she has also shared her knowledge with aspiring fashion designers at the Centro Superior de Diseño de Moda de Madrid (CSDMM) at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
“I’ve learned that it is crucial not to limit oneself. I’ve always tried to do what I really like doing, however many obstacles I may have found on the way. My work is the result of all my life experiences!” Ana Locking
It is a way of feeling, of living and of dying young. An experimental, passionate and all-encompassing spirit that ignores age but is sensitive to time and to stories of vibrant emotions, those that interpret a permanent attempt to do what needs to be done and to be whoever you want to be. This vibration is the basis of a personal certainty: even if I am 100 years old when I die, I will still die young.
The collection reflects the electrifying fury of generational youth movements; a knowing wink to its emotional energy and its fast-paced ways of expressing life.
Parameters that over the decades have been building Generation X (to which I belong), Millennials and now Gen-Z or iGen, converge with symbolic experiences of a convulsive, exciting present. Sex and gender issues, for example, progressively blur their lines and shape their intrinsic elasticity thanks to the LGBTIQ struggle.
Adolescence is a decisive stage in the construction of emotional landscapes. Teenage existentialism tends to get lost in dream-like tangents, which are both conscious and hypnotic, but also extremely treacherous. Hyper-articulate, extravagant and analytical young people often use flippancy as a defence mechanism against hurtful outbursts from those who do not yet have a catalogue of experiences. This protective resource, which from my point of view (that of someone who has not been a teenager for almost 30 years) runs out of steam as life goes by, sometimes coexists with teenage angsts and melancholy.
Many of my creative interests have been closely linked to the coordinates of the marginal, to the periphery of contemporary cultures and subcultures and to the subversive elements of youth movements. That is why this time, once again, they take the main role.
“Too Young To Die Old" evokes the intoxicating vitality of human relationships and their pure teenage yearning. The collection jumps from a dark look, reflected in a black and white beginning dotted with marks (a metaphor of anxiety, confusion and insecurity in relationships) to an electrifying evolution that experiments with colour and textures to represent bright moments that light up the need for freedom and future happiness.
It is a very graphic, shameless collection, with quiet moments that are equally forceful. A dreamy drama with a modulated narrative that knows when to push and when to back off, aesthetically speaking, that replicates the emotional and physical maturity in the brains of my teenage subjects. Emotions and thoughts which are always represented by vibrant and sophisticated electricity.
COLOURS AND FABRICS:
Sequinned black with velvety graphite stain finishes, smoky spots on rib knit and houndstooth backgrounds, grey taffeta, silver polka dots on black and white houndstooth, midnight blue tweed with cascading embroidered sequins in silver and black, royal blue organza with metallic floral prints in fire red, metallic aquamarine, tangerine and pale green, faux fur in lavender, alpaca cloth and mohair in bubblegum pink, jacquard in forest green with black orchids, circular appliqués of metallic multicoloured fringes, Fortuny pleats on metallic floral print, blood red tweed with graphite floral print, tulle with floral sequin embroidery.