The first two things that Helena Gil refers to when talking about how she began to build Perinola, her brand of size-free garments produced in local workshops, are her family and her grandmother's dressmaker, who saw in her the possibility of a designer. . “We are 23 cousins in Venezuela. My contact with clothes as a child was typical: my cousin had a dress that she no longer wore, she would pass it to me and I would transform it so that it would serve me. “I always think of that as the essence of Perinola, which is playing with clothes.”
It was her grandmother's dressmaker who made those arrangements, and who financed her first collection: “She helped me with the promise that she would pay for it as soon as she started selling. I sold the first 70 items in my room on the first day. “I was able to pay him back and reinvest.”
Helena was 20 years old at the time and, although she had studied Liberal Studies, she was inclined to give outlet to her creativity and entrepreneurial personality. The project, as it could not be otherwise, has matured with her. “You have to reconcile the creative with the businessman. It has been a process: although Perinola has maintained the same identity (the presence of pompoms, for example), she has undergone changes to adapt to the public and historical circumstances. In twelve years everything has changed a lot. The product and our system have evolved.”
The beginnings, above all, were not easy: “In Venezuela we went through scarcity, which sometimes stimulates creativity, and we reached hyperinflation of three million percent. If I collected an invoice from a multi-brand store in the morning, before noon I had to collect it and buy fabrics so that it would not be devalued. Many stores closed and we began to sell abroad: New York, Panama, Chile, Mexico... then another political decision made exports difficult. Every year we had to change the focus, and thus perievents emerged organized by women who sold our garments abroad. That's how I started coming to Spain because Madrid was to Venezuelans what Miami was to Cubans." From one of those stays in our country six years ago, he decided to lose his return ticket.
Helena shares her story in the house she has just moved into with her partner, and where they are going to raise their expected child. Did she imagine that the firm would not only be her professional life project, but also the piece with which she would complete her personal life? “At 20 years old you don't think... I did know from a young age that I wanted a job that would allow me to combine my job aspirations with being a mother. Right now I'm about to achieve it. My idea was always to do it in my own company. That it was Perinola… I discovered it over time.”
Asked about the secret to establishing a new firm in a market that seems crowded, Helena is clear: “keeping the boat light,” she comments, referring to the ability to adapt to change at the company level; a simple, but quality product and a community of clients who feel that the firm is committed to them. Part of that commitment is in the product, friendly because of the one-size-fits-all concept, practical because it can be worn in different ways, and durable because its quality standards determine it.
“I began to realize that I liked the product to be as simple as possible, but of quality: that it did not have zippers or buttons, for example, that I liked more that the garments could be tied and done in many ways.” That game of tying and untying became serious when she decided to patent it to avoid copies: “My lawyer advised me to register the tying system instead of the design, so that no one can copy a dress with four straps that can be tied and pompoms. It is an industrial design patent valid throughout my life and the 60 years after my death. This gives prestige, when you buy the dress you also buy a work of visual art.”
The patent looks many years into the future, do you think much about the long term? “My challenge now is to see how in this new stage with my first child I stay creative so I can continue nurturing our community in the short and medium term. I want to live it and enjoy it. “Continue nurturing the brand, the clients, the workers, the collaborators.” It sounds like you have a plan.
