Javier Barroeta

Javier Barroeta (Lemoa1952) has been running one of Bilbao’s bespoke women’s clothing workshops for decades. She set up her first sewing workshop at the age of 18 in the tower-house where she was born, between Bilbao and the Arratia Valley.

He was part of the team of the legendary Pedro Rodríguez, who dressed Kim Novak, Bette Davis and the Duchess of Alba. He is a regular at the major fashion shows in Paris. He also runs the haute couture school of his name in Bilbao.

A trip on the night train between Bilbao and Barcelona changed the life of young Javier Barroeta. At the age of 19, accompanied by his mother, he was on his way to the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona, where a fashion show by the exquisite Elio Berhanyer, then at the top of his game, had been announced. Javier wanted to see it up close. And to learn.

“I was already sewing dresses, bridal gowns, coats, you name it. And I had customers who came from Durango, from Arratia, from many places, ”, he remembers.

‘But I wanted to know more. At the Majestic Hotel, the dresses of Pedro Rodríguez, who had tailors in Madrid, Barcelona and San Sebastián, were to be shown in a catwalk. On the train we met a wonderful dressmaker, Encarna Moreno, who knew Rodríguez, and my mother told her: ‘This boy would like to sew for you’,” he recalls.

The fashion house didn’t hesitate to offer him a job. Barroeta decided to go to Madrid. “They put me to the test with two women’s garments: a velvet coat and a double-faced suit; they were living for it”.

Javier Barroeta went from a farmhouse to a rooming house in Puerta del Sol in a flash. And, from cutting fabrics for dresses for the ladies of Durango, to sewing in a fashion house with 50 employees, where Sofía of Greece, Carmen MartínezBordiú, Kim Novak, the multimillionaire Bárbara Hutton or Bette Davis among many other celebrities were seen, and which has just dressed Salomé in a spectacular fringed jumpsuit for her to win the Eurovision Song Contest.

“I lived in a place where everything happened: the General Directorate of Security was there, Franco’s death, the coronation of the monarchs… I had to experience the Transition there. “.

There was also a change in society’s tastes, fashions and shopping habits. The “pret a porter” appeared on the scene and the great tailors couldn’t stand the change.

Javier Barroeta returned to Bilbao, where he worked for more than ten years as the artistic and creative director of the prestigious Kamouraska fur shop, until 1989, when he opened his own workshop in Calle General Concha. Soon after, Gloria Urtiaga, the wife of the then lehendakari Ardanza, became Barroeta’s client. He also made the wedding dress for Ardanza’s daughter.

“It got to the point where my fabric orders from Valentino or Ungaro were so important that they started sending me invitations to their collection shows in Paris. So I met the Grand Dukes of Luxembourg, Joan Collins, Caterine Deneuve, the owner of the Washington Post, Begum Om Habibeh Aga Khan and many other incredible people,’ ”, he says.

He admits that meeting couturiers such as Karl Lagerfeld and Galliano, talking to them and their teams, going into the dressing rooms and touching the clothes with his own hands has been a great experience.

A unique experience that he continues to apply today in his atelier.

Haute Couture School

For slightly less than a decade, Javier Barroeta has been running a haute couture school in Bilbao that bears his name. ‘They can come from a design centre or from any kind of degree, here we make sure they learn the trade’, stresses the couturier.

The training covers sewing technique, modelling on mannequins, draping and pattern making, as well as trends, styling, history, illustration and fabric techniques and handling. They end up developing a collection at the end of each year.

‘Caprile only wants people who have studied here; he knows they know the profession,’ says Barroeta.