Jonathan Andic, son of Mango's founder and until now vice-president of the Catalan fashion multinational, is temporarily stepping down from his positions at the company to focus on his defense. Andic's temporary withdrawal comes a week after the Mossos d'Esquadra arrested him, accused of the homicide of his father, Isak Andic, who died in Collbató in December 2024. The eldest son of Mango's founder, who avoided provisional prison after paying a one-million-euro bail, has sent an open letter to the staff in which he defends his innocence and expresses his "frustration" with the situation he is in.

A long queue of people have patiently camped out for days –and the corresponding nights– on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia. In the best-case scenario, equipped with chairs and camping furniture to make the wait more bearable. The gathering forced the Mossos d’Esquadra to intervene due to the risk of disturbances. A scene that has been repeated in multiple cities around the world, with even more extreme situations. In New York, they waited for almost a week, while attempts to speculate on the queue also proliferated. In Paris, where over 300 people gathered, the police intervened with tear gas to disperse the crowd. In Milan, the authorities had to cordon off the area after rushes, disturbances, and fights.But what is the reason for this phenomenon? Are we facing a new urban encampment like the one on May 15th to demand a higher quality democracy? Perhaps the genocide in Gaza has pushed hundreds of people to occupy public space? Or perhaps the teachers' strike and the fight for public education have become a global outcry. Well, no. The reason for this collective penance is none other than the tribute that turbocapitalism demands from its most faithful followers: the queues were to get the latest collaboration from Swatch with the emblematic Swiss high watchmaking house Audemars Piguet. All in all, as absurd as it is revealing.The easiest –and also the most tempting– would be to ridicule these people and label them as brainless, foolish, or superficial. It would even be comforting to make them the scapegoat for the ills of a world we increasingly recognize and understand less. But doing so would mean killing the messenger. Because, rather than condemning individuals, what we should demand is to identify the root of the problem.What drives some people to sleep on the street for days is not the desire to get a simple watch – however attractive it may be – but the symbolic reward that capitalism has been promising for decades: the illusion of a better life through consumption. Because today watches, much more than objects intended to measure the passage of time, have become one of the most desired social markers, especially among men. And even more so if we talk about Audemars Piguet, a firm located in the same Olympus of luxury as Rolex and reserved, practically, for that privileged minority that concentrates economic power.

For a few years now, the anticipation for red carpets has shifted to film festivals. Beyond the big award galas, venues like the Cannes Film Festival have become major fashion showcases. La Croisette closes its 79th edition this Saturday and, in terms of fashion, it will be remembered for its boldness and, above all, for one name: Demi Moore. The American actress, who was part of the festival jury this year, has made her mark by showing a playful approach to all the looks she has worn at various premieres. Moore has demonstrated such aesthetic personality that it's difficult to choose just one of the dresses she has worn, but undoubtedly the voluminous Barbie pink dress with a giant bow at the neckline is very high on the ranking.

The market punishes Puig for broken talks for the merger with Estée Lauder. The Catalan multinational of premium beauty has plummeted more than 13% on the day after the talks ended without an agreement. At Friday's market close, the stock fell to 15.18 euros, after closing on Thursday evening at around 18 euros. With this move, the titles of the perfume multinational are moving further away from the price of the stock market debut it undertook in 2024, around 24.5 euros. Estée Lauder shares, on the contrary, show a strong recovery: around 12 noon in New York, two hours after the start of the session, they were up 9.4%, to 86.3 dollars.

It might seem that as societies modernize they tend to gradually shed inherited rituals laden with formality. Current times, increasingly oriented towards practicality and immediacy, have refined many social ceremonies that today seem excessively solemn: from the rigor of wearing mourning clothes to the protocols associated with baptisms or communions. However, from time to time, rituals emerge that, like stubborn salmon swimming against the current, not only survive but reappear hypertrophied, clad in a ceremonial that they did not even have in the past. This is the case with graduations. The turn is so unexpected that there are already specialized brands in this festive-academic niche and teenagers capable of patiently waiting five hours in line to get the outfit with which to publicly stage that they have finished the fourth year of ESO.

In Andalusia, everything can change in a matter of days. The black, the hoods, and the rosaries – visible expressions of penance, renunciation, and faith – suddenly dissolve into an explosion of patterns, colors, flowers, and bodies that demand prominence at the Feria de Abril. The chest-beating and stark cries of Holy Week processions give way to celebration, excess, and immoderation. If in one case aesthetics impose restraint and anonymity, in the other it demands the exact opposite: to stand out and occupy space under the gaze of others. It is not just a change of atmosphere, but also a deeper displacement: from one emotion to another, from a way of feeling and inhabiting the body marked, with almost ritualistic precision, by the calendar to another. As if faith (or its theatricalization) also had seasons. And this is where one of its most eloquent instruments comes into play. Because, at the Feria, this need to be seen is dressed up. And it does so with a garment that draws all eyes: the flamenco dress.Despite the current perception, this dress was not born as a showpiece, but as clothing for the popular classes of the 19th century. It was worn by peasant women and vendors who attended Andalusian livestock fairs, especially the April Fair, which in its origins was a commercial space and not festive. Its shape responded to the patterns of the time: a fitted bodice and a voluminous skirt, in this case resolved with ruffles. These ruffles, now distinctive of the dress, have been interpreted in various ways. On the one hand, they have been linked to gypsy and Andalusian contexts, where the movement of the body (both in dance and in daily gestures) found its correlate in clothing that not only accompanied it, but also made it visible. On the other hand, they must be placed within the framework of 19th-century women's fashion, dominated by voluminous skirts supported by internal structures such as farthingales or crinolines, which limited mobility. Without evidence that they were conceived as an alternative, the ruffles nevertheless allowed volume to be generated without immobilizing the body.

Just twenty years ago, Hollywood premiered, without intending to or expecting it, a film that would end up becoming an icon of the fashion world, The Devil Wears Prada. Beneath the appearance of a light comedy, the film hid a much more biting background than it might have seemed at first glance. The story brought to life the homonymous novel by Lauren Weisberger, which stemmed from her own experience as an assistant to Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue and one of the most powerful figures in the industry. But what could have remained a simple chronicle of the fashion world became, in reality, a deeper reflection: not so much about fashion itself as about the forms of power that sustain it and, in particular, about the degree of violence that our society is willing to accept when this power is presented as excellence.Talking about Anna Wintour is not just talking about the magazine Vogue, but about a figure who has redefined the rules of the game of contemporary fashion. Endowed with a particularly keen nose for detecting trends and new talents –like those of John Galliano or Alexander McQueen–, she has also been the architect of one of the traits that define the sector today: the hybridization between haute couture and more everyday aesthetics. And, in parallel, she has decisively contributed to turning the inauguration of a fashion exhibition into a global event, such as the Met Gala, which has just taken place on February 4th. However, following Weisberger's account and the epithet with which she herself christened her –devil–, Wintour also embodies a certain way of understanding power: as an exercise of perfectly normalized violence, both within the sector and in relation to all the people around her. Working for her implies accepting constant humiliation, extreme competition, and renunciation of any form of personal life as natural. After all, as is repeated in The Devil Wears Prada, “a million girls would kill for this job”, even if it means seeing a brilliant resume reduced to tasks as mundane as bringing her coffee, picking up her dry cleaning, or satisfying her daughters' whims.

A very floral carpet with reminiscences of Van Gogh saw the top brass of global celebrities pass by this Monday night, who gathered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to raise funds for the Fashion Institute. The traditional Met Gala was held, not without controversy due to the participation of Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, and his wife, Lauren Sanchez, as the main financiers of the event, a fact that has led to calls for a boycott. Nevertheless, the gala continues to be the big fashion party and this year the chosen theme –Fashion is art– has given rise to the most diverse interpretations: on the carpet we have seen sober dresses but also very outlandish options, the most direct way to make an impact.

In full negotiations with Estée Lauder for a possible integration, Puig Brands, the Catalan fashion and beauty multinational, has announced its first-quarter results for this year, with sales of 1,215 million euros, an increase of 0.8%. The rise is 4.7% at constant perimeter and exchange rates. The company insists that "no definitive decision has been made" with the US firm, with whom talks were confirmed on March 23. It adds that "until an agreement is reached, it cannot be guaranteed that there may be a transaction nor its terms".

A fascinating fact about the functioning of trends is that, no matter how many experts and agencies are dedicated to predicting them, they always retain a component of unpredictability. It would be like the flight of starlings, which we can observe how they move, but we will never know who decides their turn, direction, or the moment they stop. And it is that fashion, far from being the sum of individual decisions, responds to dynamics inscribed in a complex social fabric. This is why, while big brands invest time, money, and entire teams to produce the it-bag of the season, suddenly a completely unremarkable one appears that, incomprehensibly, concentrates all the desire: the tote bag from Trader Joe's supermarket.On the one hand, we could believe that ostentatious aspirations of social climbing have been set aside in favor of a certain democratic practicality. But this consolation lasts little: why hasn't the same happened with the Bon Preu (Esclat) or Condis supermarket bag? It is in this mismatch that it becomes evident that distinction has not disappeared, but rather has become sophisticated. It no longer operates solely through price or ostentation, but through subtle codes, where the value of an object depends as much on cultural context as on its material cost.

When the good weather arrives, it's not just our clothes that change, our footwear also adapts to the new temperatures. That's why brands are starting to present their star models before the heat arrives, for all those who like to get things done before it's completely mandatory. These are 4 models of women's shoes that will be very popular this summer.

Zara has done it again. Without any shame or embarrassment, it has strolled through the supermarket of social struggles, underground cultures, and symbolic identities with its cart wide open: a bit of marginality to give it pedigree, some uncomfortable figure of those who were a nuisance in life, and, above all, a good dose of rebellion. That's right: all nicely domesticated. Everything, passed through the quick boil of fast fashion, shrink-wrapped and ready to be consumed in the form of a prefabricated identity. And this time, who got to enter the shredder of turbocapitalism? Camarón de la Isla.And this in the full Camarón year, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the birth of the iconic cantaor, a figure who was not only an exceptional voice of flamenco, but also one of its great renovators. From La leyenda del tiempo, he opened the genre to new sounds and sensibilities, and moved it from an almost fossilized space to a living territory in tension with the present. But, furthermore, he contributed to overflowing the social image of gypsy culture beyond the cliché to which it had been subjected during Francoism, trapped between folklorism and marginality. Together with key figures like Paco de Lucía, he broadened the imaginaries around gypsy identity, both from within and in its public projection.

Bridal white returns to Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week, but also vibrant red, electric blue, emerald green, fuchsia, striking yellow, sequins or gala satins and all the intense colors of the red carpet. One more year, Bridal will become an essential meeting point to discover the market and the trends that will mark the 2027 season, and not only for bridal fashion, but also for party, gala, and accessories.

The 080 Barcelona Fashion closes its 37th edition with proposals from 26 brands, a clear international commitment, and its classic combination of established designers and young emerging talents. The move to Port Vell was experienced with a certain duality, as the spectacularity of the new location could not be fully enjoyed since the runway area was closed off by large black curtains that blocked the sea views. Nevertheless, we have selected some of the most prominent trends we saw over these four days of fashion.

The new edition of 080 Barcelona Fashion begins this Tuesday full of novelties: the first and most obvious is the change of location, as after years at the modernist complex of Sant Pau, the Catalan catwalk moves to Port Vell, specifically to the Trencaones promenade, where an ephemeral structure of more than 50 meters long will be installed to host the different proposals of the participating designers. The change of location had long been considered by the organization because Sant Pau had become too small for a catwalk that has been growing in recent years. The entry of the Barcelona City Council into the organization of the event – another of the novelties –, which materializes with a contribution of 500,000 euros, has been decisive in choosing the new location, by the sea, which, as Moisès Rodríguez, director of the Consorci de Comerç, Artesania i Moda, explains, turns Barcelona "into the only catwalk that is by the sea". For Rodríguez, this new location also has a message linked to the city's past, as "the sea is fundamental to the history of the Industrial Revolution in Catalonia and the development of the textile industry". "The port was a strategic location for the transport of cotton and this past connects us with the present of the industry and fashion," he highlights. With the contribution of the City Council, and the support of the Diputació de Barcelona, which this edition has joined the project to boost the fashion sector, the total budget for 080 Barcelona Fashion is 2.8 million euros.

Humanity, with the Artemis mission, is once again looking towards the Moon and, with it, unearths from the memory chest the old space race that marked the Cold War. Back then, amidst the dangerous tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, the world fractured into two irreconcilable blocs and the conquest of space became another stage for geopolitical competition. It was not just about reaching further, but about demonstrating who had the capacity to impose themselves on the other. In this context, the media flooded the collective imagination for years with images of rockets, astronauts, and distant planets. A persistent iconography that not only informed, but also shaped how society thought about tomorrow. Because, fundamentally, every society is also built upon this inevitable question: what awaits us in the future?Imagining life in space involved speculating about what this day-to-day would be like, and design was launched to rethink furniture, cars, and housing for this projected future. Between armchairs that evoked capsules and residences that seemed like orbital stations, the "space age" fashion was born, conceived to facilitate a hypothetical interplanetary life. Creators like André Courrèges or Pierre Cardin opted for rigid outfits, detached from the body, almost like shells. White, associated with the aerospace universe, became the dominant color, accompanied by helmets and metallic boots. In parallel, Paco Rabanne's proposals took fashion towards the realm of engineering, with pieces made of metallic plates that stretched the very limits of the discipline.What is revealing, seen with perspective, is the extent to which these speculations about the future have outstripped reality. If we had listened to Stanley Kubrick with 2001: A Space Odyssey, to Star Trek or even to The Jetsons, today we would already be living among flying cars, off planet Earth and in zero gravity conditions. But perhaps it is even more significant to note that, if technological imagination often goes too far, it tends, on the other hand, to fall short in other areas: such as women's rights. In these imaginary worlds, they continue to occupy subordinate positions, even in futures where humanity already inhabits other planets. And this forces us to ask whether we are really dealing with speculations or, rather, with projected male desires.However, beyond the television impact of the first moon landing –a moment highly choreographed from a propagandistic point of view by the United States–, the most transformative image was not that of the Moon, but that of the Earth. The Blue Marble photograph, which became humanity's first selfie, revealed a paradox: after years of division and confrontation, what we saw was, in reality, a single shared unit. And it was precisely this compact image that activated, in a part of the population, a new pacifist and ecological consciousness.Unlike the Cold War, today the United States does not compete in a strictly bipolar world, even though the space race continues to be a duel, this time with China, which has also set out to step on the Moon in the coming years. It is, however, inevitable to point out the paradox: at a time when the world seems to be fragmenting and humanity is going through a deep crisis of values, we look outwards again. Perhaps, as in Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris", this journey is not so much about the future as about the past. Or perhaps – and herein lies the question – it should serve us, precisely, to look better in the mirror and rethink where we stand as humanity. But perhaps, seeing the recent images of Artemis astronauts wishing a Happy Easter from space and looking for eggs around the ship, what is in doubt is not the future, but whether we still have any shred of self-awareness.

With the arrival of good weather, it's time to take out the sunglasses from the drawer, which have been hidden from the light during this long winter. Precisely because the time to show them off has arrived, many brands have presented new collections so that everyone can find some that suit them well and look good. We review some of the most notable ones.

Easter Week, beyond processions, masses, palms, and "monas" (cakes), displays a repertoire of vestments that we have learned to look at without seeing. Garments that, being so familiar, have ceased to seem strange to us, but which, if we pause for a moment, are profoundly unusual and far removed from any form of everyday dress. And among the mantillas with combs, the Nazarene tunics, the girdles, or the cloaks of the virgins, there is an element that stands out for its formal power and its symbolic connotations: the hood. The doors of Seville Cathedral open and the first Nazarenes begin to emerge, in a line, surrounded by an intense smell of wax and incense. Tunics, candles, and pointed hoods that rise above everything. The drums mark a dry and constant rhythm and the attendees remain expectant, in a contained silence. The faces of the Nazarenes are not seen, only their eyes, and the street, for a moment, ceases to be an everyday space to become a stage. The hood has fulfilled its function: to make individual identity disappear to give prominence to the saint being worshipped. In this way, it ensures that the wearer is seen without being recognized and allows them to enter the structure of the ritual, assuming an attitude of discipline and surrender. But what is the origin of this strange hat, which has survived centuries of history?Its origin is not, in any case, processional, but rather it was born as an instrument of public penance between the 15th and 17th centuries, in the context of the Holy Inquisition. The condemned were exhibited with sambenets — a type of tunic — and coroces — hats often conical or pointed —. Its function was clearly punitive and exemplary: to make sin visible and to humiliate the sinner. Far from pursuing anonymity, as happens today, it was about marking the body and exposing it publicly.It will be between the 17th and 18th centuries when Holy Week processions are institutionalized and penance ceases to be imposed to become voluntary. In this new context, the hood is re-signified: it comes to symbolize spiritual aspiration —with its projection towards heaven—, the assumption of religious discipline, and the centrality of the ritual over the person. But beyond its morphology, there is a question that is even more unsettling and often bewilders many visitors: what relationship does this piece have with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)?The KKK was founded in 1865, after the Civil War, as a violent reaction against the abolition of slavery and with the aim of restoring white supremacy. It deployed a regime of terror and intimidation against the African American population, and to do so it equipped itself with a deliberate aesthetic of authority and threat. Its iconography —white robe and pointed hood— draws from a mixture of imaginaries, among which are European phantasmagorical, ritual, and religious references. The formal coincidence with the hood is evident, but its meaning is radically opposite. If in the context of Holy Week anonymity expresses humility, penance, and dissolution of the self, in the case of the KKK it serves to guarantee impunity and exercise collective violence. The same operation, that of concealing identity, which can serve both to submit and to dominate.Easter Sunday brings the Holy Week to an end and, with it, the time of penance. The solemnity fades away as easily as a Nazarene takes off his hood. A few days later, in Andalusia, the calendar turns and the revelry of the April Fair makes way: colors, ruffles, moons, exposed bodies, flowers in hair, Manila shawls... The contrast is so immediate that it is difficult not to wonder to what extent what we have seen was a deep experience or a shared theatricalization. Garments that are activated and deactivated as ways of organizing bodies, time, and desire.

There are developments in the beauty, cosmetics, and perfume sector. The Catalan company Puig Brands confirmed tonight that it is in talks with the American company Estée Lauder, also majority-owned by the family. In a statement to the Spanish National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), the group controlled by the Puig family acknowledged that these negotiations are taking place, as previously reported by [the Spanish news outlet]. Financial TimesIn the same statement, the multinational—which owns brands such as Paco Rabanne, Nina Ricci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Byredo, Charlotte Tilbury, and Carolina Herrera, among others—adds that the talks are focused on "a possible combination of businesses with The Estée Lauder Companies Inc." In any case, they assure that "no final decision has been made nor has any agreement been reached." And they add that "until there is an agreement, there is no guarantee that a transaction will take place, nor its terms." The Wall Street Journal Information has emerged about the operation, which would create a cosmetics giant valued at over €30 billion. Following news of the talks, shares of the US firm fell by more than 8% on the stock market. Estée Lauder is larger than Puig Brands, which also has a portion of its capital publicly traded. The US group's value is around $30 billion – it fell to $28 billion on Monday – while Estée Lauder's is valued at approximately $9 billion. IPO

The Catalan group, which debuted on the stock exchange on May 3, 2024, launched at €24.50 per share, a price it has not yet recovered. This Monday, it closed at €15.57, up 3.59%. The family that owns the Catalan multinational, with a 112-year history, retained more than 90% of the voting rights despite its IPO. In 2025, Puig reported net revenues of €5.042 billion, a 5.3% increase, and profits of €594 million, an 11.9% increase.

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One of the latest bombshells in fashion This has been the announcement of Zara's new collaborationThe global fast-fashion giant has brought on board designer John Galliano, one of the most singular figures in contemporary design, for a two-year period. It's a partnership that was difficult to foresee, but one that is profoundly revealing of the current moment we are living in as a society.

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