Esteban Cortázar Is Reissuing 11 Looks from His Very Noughties Debut Collection 

Beyoncé released her debut solo album Dangerously in Love in 2003. It was while examining the CD that Esteban Cortázar–a senior in high school at the time–found out that the superstar had been photographed in a couple of pieces from his very first collection. Twenty years later, the Colombian-American designer has partnered with Farfetch via its “Beat” program–which focuses on special fashion pieces and collaborations–to re-release a number of looks from his launch outing.

Cortázar was the youngest designer ever to show at New York Fashion Week when his clothes hit the runway for spring 2002. Over the last two decades, his career has taken him from his hometown of Miami via New York to Paris for a stint as creative director at Emanuel Ungaro. It was a short-lived tenure, but he still calls the City of Light home.

The Farfetch collaboration happened quite spontaneously. “Farfetch has been a partner of mine for many years, and Holli Rogers [the retailer’s Chief Brand Officer] has been a friend and a supporter for my whole career, pretty much,” Cortázar said from his Paris apartment, a day before heading to Miami, where he’s celebrating the project. “It was last summer that I realized that 20 years were coming up, and I started showing friends that first collection, and the girls were saying, ‘oh my god, these dresses!’ I kept seeing how much the early 2000s were influencing the shows now, and I was seeing all those references I grew up with and was a part of. It all felt connected.”

Of the collaboration, Rogers says, “obviously from a design standpoint and all the referencing that’s going on now with Y2K, and the icons that wore his collection, it’s just spot on.” And Art Basel in Miami is the ideal place to launch it, not only because it’s Cortázar’s home turf, but because Farfetch has been focusing more on the U.S. market this year, especially key markets like L.A., Houston, and southern Florida. Part of the brand’s strategy, Rogers explains, is to look at the Latine and Hispanic markets, and “start speaking to this customer base that I feel doesn’t get spoken to particularly—not from a luxury standpoint.” 

It wasn’t only Beyoncé wearing Cortázar’s pieces circa the early ’00s, but stars on TV as well. Kim Cattrall sported a Cortazar top on Sex and the City, in the infamous “The Post-It Always Sticks Twice” episode from season six. Sarah Jessica Parker has talked about how the show’s popularity with the social media generation was a reason behind bringing it back with HBO Max as And Just Like That… So why not bring back some of the fashion featured in the show, too?

“We are in an industry where it’s all about next, and I grew up in a time where I would hear designers like Karl Lagerfeld say things along the lines of ‘I never look back, I'm always looking forward,’” Cortázar says. “But I love looking back.” Indeed, if fashion has proven anything this past year, it is that there’s value in looking back. Many of 2022’s most talked about pieces come from reimagining the past. Think of Marc Jacobs’s Heaven line, which repackages the ’90s and 2000s teenage dream for today’s youth, or of Glenn Martens’s success at Diesel, another 2000s gem; or even of Madonna partnering with Saint Laurent and Anthony Vaccarello to release a re-edition of her 1992 Sex book, also at this year’s Art Basel.  

Targeting a new generation is exactly what Cortázar and Rogers are up to. “You want to reference the past because it’s amazing, but being able to talk to a new audience, because obviously so much of what we do is about what’s new, is what’s truly great,” Rogers says. An added bonus? These pieces reflect Cortázar’s two decades of experience. “The pieces are the exact same, except that the quality is much better. I didn’t have the craftsmanship and know-how I have now back then,” he explains.

Cortázar stopped releasing new collections during the pandemic—Covid was especially hard on small, independent brands—and instead turned his attention to projects like designing a capsule collection for Desigual and creating costumes for the New York City Ballet. “I realized that I liked doing things at a different pace,” he says. “I don’t have to worry about cohesiveness with what came before or after, or if it’s going to get picked up by a store or put in a magazine.”

It turns out that better apparel production techniques aren’t the only thing that Cortázar has learned after 20 years in the biz. “I came up in a time where the thought of skipping a season was a big no-no,” he says, “but I turned 38 this year and I’m looking forward to continuing building this journey with the perspective I have now. So much has changed, but the passion is still there. I’ve been the talk of the town and I’ve been up and down, but I don’t want to play the industry’s games anymore, I’m ready to do me.”