The Birth of Creative Soul

Explore the power of nostalgia in fashion design as we delve into the creative process of Andrea Rodríguez Eiras and her brand rdrs. From childhood memories to conscious craftsmanship, discover how the past inspires the future.

Lucía Adriana

Updated 10:29 am EST, December 12, 2024

Published 01:11 am EST, December 12, 2024

Featuring rdrs

Creative Director: Andrea Rodríguez Eiras
Photographer: Guillermo Alvarez
Models: María Gallego, Raul Quintana, Reis Nascimento Silva
Hair & Make-Up Artist: Alba Sieira
Art & Set: María Feijoo, Daniel Selas

Fashion

The Birth of Creative Soul

Lucía Adriana

Updated 10:29 am EST, December 12, 2024

Published 01:11 am EST, December 12, 2024

Featuring rdrs

Fashion Inspired by Childhood

In Spain, there’s a place where nature’s rhythm drowns out the pulse of the city, a place where an almost spiritual respect for the natural world shapes the lives of everyone born or raised there, and where the slow dance of the seasons is the only compass, the only clock you’ll ever need.

This place is Galicia, tucked into the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula. It’s the kind of place where nature envelopes you in ways you might never expect. Although its skies are famous for their moody clouds and silvery grays, Galicia’s heart is warm, lively, and whimsical, with nostalgia and resilience shaped by its people.

Explore the power of childhood nostalgia in fashion design as we delve into the creative process of Andrea Rodríguez Eiras and her brand rdrs.

Galicians are known for a natural and specific philosophy, perfectly summed up by the local phrase, “Si chove, que chova” — if it rains, let it rain —a saying that captures their calm, unbothered outlook and easy alignment with nature.

From Galicia with Love

But, beyond its landscapes, Galicia holds a unique place in the “world of fashion,” with a legacy in textiles that runs deep… It’s just due to its rainy and often cold climate that wool and linen production historically thrived here, building, therefore, a robust local industry that endures until this day. Case in point: the powerhouse of Inditex was born right here, specifically in A Coruña, where its first factories and designs took shape in 1975.

It is among all this enchanting backdrop where we find Andrea Rodríguez Eiras, a young designer whose latest creations were recently showcased at Madrid’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (MBFWMadrid), particularly at the Allianz Ego Space, a zone where novel designers are welcomed to show their work.

Explore the power of childhood nostalgia in fashion design as we delve into the creative process of Andrea Rodríguez Eiras and her brand rdrs.

Andrea’s journey, both creative and personal, is undeniably rooted in the natural world around her. To truly grasp her work, we need to understand how her context shaped her outlook, her process, and her passion for creation.

It’s definitely not a coincidence that her designs are defined by an intense focus on craftsmanship, the time invested in each piece, and the need to reflect in every piece that time, focus, and love tied up. Her approach is all about experimentation, whether with oils and acrylics, graphic design, or fabric textures.

From synthetic raffia to soft mohair, she treats each material with the same reverence. Andrea even spent months painting murals, developing a hands-on relationship with her materials, and creating a dialogue of sorts that shaped the authenticity of her work. Her experience infused her work with a powerful authenticity and rawness, firmly anchored in time and a tactile dialogue with her materials.

The Rawest Instincts

Andrea was born in Pontevedra and raised by her grandparents. This is common in Spain, but in her case, it proved pivotal. Who better than grandparents to help you understand life holistically?

Afternoons spent drawing were the norm for her, as she quickly found that capturing the landscapes and emotions of her surroundings in color and shape was her way of expressing her keen, observant spirit. What began as a childhood pastime soon became a central focus.

Explore the power of childhood nostalgia in fashion design as we delve into the creative process of Andrea Rodríguez Eiras and her brand rdrs.

She read, explored, painted, and sketched endlessly, learning everything from crochet—always, of course, with her grandmother’s guidance—to any other creative outlet she could find. While her sister started her music lessons at the conservatory, Andrea found herself captivated by a drawing class nearby, and, at home, while listening to her sister’s violin practice, her own fascination for fashion, something that passed down through generations of women in her family, took root.

Later on, when it was already that time in life that we’re a bit forced to choose a career path, Andrea knew without a doubt she wanted to study fine arts—a decision she happily still cherishes many years later. Reflecting on her university years, she speaks with refreshing sensitivity, noting how, while academia often aims to build you up, it more often breaks you down just as profoundly.

She entered college passionate about hyper-realistic drawing and left making freeform sketches. And really, isn’t that the truest path in life, one that makes you “circle back” to the roots of your rawest instincts?

A Trained Eye

After graduating from fine arts, Andrea pursued a master’s degree in Fashion Design and Creative Direction at the University of Vigo, where she immersed herself in new creative and artistic concepts, developing a balance between the abstract and the most delicate side of the art creation and learning to manage her creative processes, pushing her concepts from vision to reality. Those years were so helpful in terms of discovering her path to finding both peace and “perfection” through independent work, which we might not give enough credit to.

Explore the power of childhood nostalgia in fashion design as we delve into the creative process of Andrea Rodríguez Eiras and her brand rdrs.

One of the key lessons Andrea took from both her degree and her master’s program was how to “train the eye.” She learned not just what aligns with her aesthetic convictions but also how to break down that intuitive sense of harmony to its components, aiming not only to enjoy harmony in others’ work but to one day create it herself.

Her first collection was her master’s thesis, a body of work packed with a raw, passionate vision that was woven deeply into each piece. And it was so well welcomed by everyone who both judged it and simply observed it.

This work was composed of a collection with a very passionate root, a series of garments that managed to capture, through the use and experimentation of techniques and materials, all the inspirations of its creator, and that managed to perfectly encapsulate every aspect that made Andrea, the designer she is today, from her childhood, to her adulthood, including of course her journey through university.

Unbound by References

Talking about her handling of her creative impulses, I hear her curiously speak about how her work and creative process lie in the flight from references, such an unusual choice, especially in an era in which all kinds of references and in any format, both digital and analog, can be found at the click of a button on hundreds of platforms, and in which the work of any kind of creative is based on keeping all the senses on continuous alert with the sole purpose of acquiring references. She is so conscious that with this eagerness to avoid reference (and trend), she is faced with presenting a work that is too out of the ordinary.

Explore the power of childhood nostalgia in fashion design as we delve into the creative process of Andrea Rodríguez Eiras and her brand rdrs.

After this, she told me that her almost daily goal is to be very present in the environment around her, to “be a person,” and, therefore, to be well aware of her context. She is very interested in many socio-culturally relevant aspects such as politics, ethics, philosophy, dialogue, and debate with the opinions most contrary to her own, and precisely from these aspects that she draws her inspiration when creating, not from reference, but from experience. Andrea emphasizes that touch, texture, and color are fundamental to her work, citing her relationship with touch-vision synesthesia as a core aspect not just of her artistic career but of her entire life.

From Memory to Garment

This relationship is a very emotional part of her life, even nostalgic, as it helps her not only to imagine but also to remember and keep alive all kinds of memories through her hands and the memories they store. Andrea tries to evoke the nostalgia of childhood through these stimuli, making pieces such as XXL sweaters, puffed sleeves, exaggerated scaled pockets, and other patterns sized for adults, such as overalls, blankets, bibs… and other elements that may remind us of when we inherited as children, warm garments whose sleeves always had to be rolled up, or sometimes just simply transfer certain sensitivity or those uncontaminated emotions that we all once had daily.

Explore the power of childhood nostalgia in fashion design as we delve into the creative process of Andrea Rodríguez Eiras and her brand rdrs.

The concept of her brand truly goes far beyond creating garments or designs; it has a 360º vision, loaded to the maximum of meaning and that tries to capture the vision from the very first second that the eyes can rest on her creations and that these and their materials are capable of, through the look alone, generate stimuli in touch, memory, opinion or even any sort of perception, way before touching or wearing them.

To get started in her designing and developing journey, Andrea follows a very well-defined method, although without form (if that is possible); it all begins with a “postcard” that she keeps in her memory, a photograph, a drawing, a memory of something material or the form of a thought that has haunted her anytime, it can be something as instinctive as remembering the shape and colors of the little bunnies and apples that surrounded the fruit bowl of her grandparents’ house, a bowl that besides fruit, kept a moment as ordinary as beautiful for Andrea as a child.

Explore the power of childhood nostalgia in fashion design as we delve into the creative process of Andrea Rodríguez Eiras and her brand rdrs.

Once this postcard arises, “everything comes rolling in,” she takes inspiration and plans a way to bring it back to life, either through a bag, a graphic on a T-shirt, or any other sudden impulse that crosses her mind. At this point, she feels the imperious need to get to work, to use her own hands to get to the final result that shapes her thoughts, and there is nothing that can stop her then; the first of many phases of execution begins right at that moment.

Finding Inspiration in Childhood

Textile anthropology, in regards to sustainability, makes up a large part of the production philosophy of rdrs because the traditional usage rules of certain fabrics in direct relation to the environment is to forget the human nature of fashion and, in turn, to leave aside the ethical responsibility that concerns anyone who today is dedicated to producing even in the smallest quantities.

It is precisely for this reason that upcycling and rescuing absolutely everything possible to create something new is the raison d’être of her products. Throughout our conversation, Andrea revisits themes like distance and closeness, intelligently framing the vast differences between individuals who nonetheless share the same land and, to a large extent, similar experiences. She also reflects on the purity of childhood—a time when our responses are instinctual before adolescence and adulthood settle in and steer us into more scripted social codes.

Explore the power of childhood nostalgia in fashion design as we delve into the creative process of Andrea Rodríguez Eiras and her brand rdrs.

Throughout the whole interview, Andrea talks about some concepts such as remoteness and proximity and extrapolates them to all the fields that usually surround an ordinary person, I guess it is a way —very clever, by the way— to put into perspective the wide differences of all human beings who curiously share the same land, and therefore the same experiences in a considerably high percentage.

She also talks about the purity of childhood and how, when we are children and have not yet established our personality and defined our “own” social codes, we act in a very similar and practically instinctive way before different stimuli, something that in adolescence and adulthood, we lose, naturally. In certain cases, her reflections are nothing more than a mere (and accurate) reflection of her person, her work, her motivation when creating, and her very special project, rdrs.

Lucía Adriana

Editor, Fashion & Culture

Lucía holds a master’s degree in communication management, specializing in fashion and luxury marketing. With a profound appreciation for art, fashion, and history, she has discovered her vocation in fashion journalism. Currently, she dedicates her efforts to this field in her early twenties, residing in the dynamic city of Madrid.

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