Antonio Banderas caused a bit of a stir when he announced that he would enroll as a fashion student at the legendary Central Saint Martins in London and in an interview with 1Granary, CSM's student publication, Banderas talks about the decision and the ultimate motivating factor: BRINGING CAPES BACK TO MENSWEAR.
Banderas starts by giving us some context to his curious enrollment. He's actually been crafting and selling fragrances for a perfume company in Spain for the past 19 years that now sells in 93 countries around the world. He's no stranger to the lifestyle business, it seems. He even expanded his name brand—Antonio Banderas Designs—into glasses. His experience wearing costumes for different roles—ZORRO!—also brought him into the world fashion. He then goes off about how much he loves capes and wants to experiment with them in his designs. He seems to know quite a bit about the piece:
There is one garment that I love that was lost in menswear a long time ago, and I would like to experiment with it: the cape. Capes in the winter, in places like this… I think they have incredible possibilities. ... Now, in winter time, you could just wrap yourself up in a cape, it’s so easy! CLACK! There are all these varieties of capes. For example, in the time of Charles the Third in Spain, capes were an instrument to kill – and to cover yourself. People used to do this (makes Zorro move) and nobody would know who you were. So they used to cut the capes and do these short capes, because it was forbidden by the law to wear long capes at night.
Capes are already sort of back. You might remember Lemaire did a variation for F/W 15. Either way, I'd like to think that Banderas' vast industry experience as Zorro may be enough to put him over the top and bring that shit back for good.
