The crush is clear: Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada (Madrid, 1960) loves traveling by train. “I am a fan of trains. No matter what happens, I like going by train a thousand times more than by plane. The train makes me very morbid. I love it, because you can read, you're relaxed... I, on the plane, have been very scared all my life. I always fall asleep on the train, I'm that lucky,” she celebrates with journalist Joana Bonet in the series of 12 interviews Mujeres y Viajeras de Renfe.
He immediately remembers his first trip on the AVE. “He went to the Seville Expo. I had an exhibition for Swatch in a little house called Casa de la Caridad in Seville, and there were 12 suits that told the time. They were watch suits. I went with an aunt of mine and with Tristán, who was a baby of two years or so, and he didn't want to get off the train, this has happened to me more times!
That same emotion with which she moves on rails is what the designer feels for fashion, whose aesthetic canons she challenged. “I've been like that since I was little, it doesn't cost me anything, it's like someone who knows how to sing. It's what I like and have fun, I only know how to make that type of clothing and fashion. What's more, it has always seemed to me that the ones who were in disguise were the others. I saw her fashion shows and said: and someone will wear this? When you are like that, you see the world from a completely different perspective,” she says.
Also from another perspective he began to value trips when the pandemic took them away from him. “When they locked us in, while I was in the countryside, I thought a lot about traveling. I have traveled so much… Last month, for example, I made 15 trips. Apart from parades, conferences... Two or three years ago, before Covid, I did 74 parades around the world in one year. In one week, I did five shows on three continents! Let's say it wasn't for pleasure but for work. When she was confined, she told me: “I haven't taken advantage of traveling as much as I should, I've been to so many amazing countries…”. I was very sorry for her.”
Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada has turned color into a kind of religion in her work, because hers is art, and in her life. “My whole life is a fight against depression. I have always said that I have seen my mother depressed. “Colorful clothes, like happy houses, like light, are the best fight against depression in the world.”
Now Ágatha celebrates that color has finally conquered society. “People already have colored sneakers, colored watches, colored things, colored phones. “People notice that they need color because it helps them a lot to be happy.”
The designer remembers with Joana Bonet the intensity of fashion in the 80s, when she began this adventure. “I think at that time there was a craze with fashion, because it meant freedom. I have seen this a lot in Eastern and Latin American countries. In the latter, it has had an impressive boom and that has made people freak out. In Mexico, I have been able to go to forty Fashion Weeks. “In Monterrey, in Aguascalientes, everywhere, there has been an explosion of fashion.”
Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada criticizes corniness, which for her is “people who want to show what they are not. The ostentation. Furthermore, there are elegant people and tacky people, and in Spain we have had fashion for 20 years in which, the tacky something is, the more successful it is,” she highlights.
In his case, he positively values the democratization of fashion that companies like Inditex have made possible and which has as a consequence that people dress better and better in Spain. “It has improved a lot, because before only very rich people were well dressed. Another thing is that people have been wearing tracksuits for two years,” he clarifies, and then highlights the good things about fashion. “Being well dressed and eating well are the two things that make you the most happy. I think the amount of happiness that being well dressed can give you is infinite.”
An environmentalist and feminist, the designer is scandalized that people waste and pollute. “It seems so rude to me. Having the lights on, not respecting the water, taking a shower for an hour…”
For this reason, despite having had feminism in her family since she was a child and having practiced it since she was 10 years old, she believes that now is the time to dedicate ourselves to saving the planet. “I am very happy with everything we have advanced in equality and I would like us to continue making much more progress, but I would prioritize, at this moment, the issue of climate change. If we all did thousands of small actions! “I would return to the fight for women's rights when this climate change thing is more straightened out, which is still a long way off.”
Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada celebrates the advantages of love after the age of 55. “It's much more fun than when you're 20, when you're kind of overwhelmed: you have to find a boyfriend, have children, have a job... You're much less free! On the other hand, at my age, you don't have to prove anything, you do whatever you want. "It's a lot more fun."
The meeting ends with a question from the journalist: “How many lives have you lived, Ágatha?” The designer's response is this: “One, but very intensely.” And what a one!
