EL VIAJE
I’m JC, London based Visual Artist, and this is my Personal Project El Viaje, in which I used fashion to try to answer the question: When does one stop being an immigrant? Is it a conscious act or a decision made by others? Is full assimilation the success of the migrant or their defeat? Some people show their migrant background with pride, while others desperately try to get rid of any migrant sign in an attempt to blend in. But, we all have one thing in common. At the end of every migrant’s journey, we must reinvent ourselves.
No one is from anywhere, and we are all from somewhere else. The history of our countries is built on layers of migration waves. The contemporary human is the sum of all these journeys. We carry them on ourselves. They sound like accents, they look like skin tones, hair types or facial features, they can take the form of traditions or family names. We wear our migration history like clothes.
Clothes also have journeys of their own. From the moment they are created, clothes are part of the stories of whoever wears them. And, as they are handed down from generation to generation, or acquired in vintage markets, or reclaimed, repurposed and upcycled, their stories get reinvented the more the clothes are worn.
In this fashion editorial that we have called El Viaje (The Journey, in Spanish), we convey this idea of wearing your migration journeys on yourself by using pre-loved dresses that have been reclaimed and given a new life. The pieces have been upcycled by adding additional layers of fabrics, representing how migrant lives are reinvented by adopting the new culture of the new countries we call home.
Photographer JC Candanedo
Stylist Juliet Herrera, founder of The Reclaimery
Makeup Fabiola Bastianelli
Hair Rachel Williamson
Model Sarah Eng