Maria Bernad has arrived in a time machine in the future – with her own style, recycled fashion and hope for more sustainable fashion consumption.
She has everything from the flea market: cycling goggles for effective UV protection, pearl jewelry as a symbol of female beauty and underpants. Their leg holes sewn together, the panties converted into a mini bag: Maria Bernad is an upcycling designer and likes vintage. “The most influential Spanish woman in the fashion industry”, says Vanity Fair. Maria was 23 at the time, her style was unique, her retro looks unmistakable. And her work – damn good: Vogue wants Bernad as a stylist, street style photographers want her in front of the lens. What does she want? Driving her label Les Fleurs forward and traveling through time: Experimental through fashion – from the 30s to the 90s, across past art eras and against the current. This is how Maria creates the trends of tomorrow from yesterday. Thanks to Instagram: This is where the Spaniard communicates upcycled fashion to hundreds of thousands. The feed resembles a mood board, as eclectic as the trashionista herself. A collection inspired by art, film and flea markets – Monet, Almodóvar and lots of valuable junk. Enough to found Les Fleurs Studio in 2017. The virtual vintage store becomes a platform for fashion collaborations between sustainable young designers. Here, the 26-year-old sells old scraps of fabric, sewn together and reinterpreted to create exclusive upcycling designs: high-quality, trendy, produced with zero waste – it works. Maria doesn’t just have underpants sewn together, beautiful hair and colorful glitter eyeshadow – she also has the guts to stand up for her values without compromise. A bearer of hope, dressed garishly, but with the best intentions for a future in which we value what is already here. There is no smile left for fast fashion: Maria takes fashion as seriously as her Les Fleurs Studio, which she promotes solely with sustainable labels. And the Parisian asphalt on which the Queen of Trashion skillfully poses is as hard as the ground: That our fashion consumption needs to be reconsidered, that the future needs more courageous Marias – and fewer of us who, unfortunately, would never walk around like that.
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