It is barely nine in the morning in Granollers, a town with an industrial past and around 60,000 inhabitants in the Vallès Oriental region, 27 kilometers from Barcelona. Amadeu and Gemma Barbany, father and daughter, “partners for seven years”, open the door of Dracs, their local fashion store in the center of the city, on a pedestrian street a stone's throw from the market square, and prepare to dedicate the day taking a look at the IAIOS universe. The brand's colorful sweaters await on the large wooden counters. These are garments designed, as Gemma tells us, “to last”, as a resistance to the culture of frenetic immediacy and fast fashion. As Amadeu explains, they want to be “a testament to the eternal youth of grandfather's clothes, those fun, different, handmade pieces with personality that transcend the vertigo of fashion because people feel comfortable with them and attached to them.”
IAIOS is the latest incarnation of a family business whose origins go back to the fabric shop that Joan Barbany, Gemma's great-great-grandfather, opened in Granollers in 1895. Great-grandfather Amadeu added a workshop and began making his own garments there. “Back in 1990,” explains Gemma Barbany, “my father opened the first version of Dracs, a shop whose underground spaces hosted workshops, exhibitions, small concerts and general social and cultural initiatives that helped to make Granollers more popular “20 years.” The business was closed in 2012 and reopened three years later at its current location. Amadeu, who by then had already become president of the Granollers Gran Centro dealer association, was clear that the new business phase would also be “a A change in mentality must correspond: it’s time to try something different.”
A wardrobe with several IAIOS models.Vanessa Montero
IAIOS garments are made from real recycled cotton and acrylic fabrics and classified by color range.Vanessa Montero
A detail of the creative space of Gemma Barbany, a fine arts graduate who eventually dedicated herself to local artisanal fashion design. Vanessa Montero
So Gemma, with a degree in fine arts and a master's degree in digital communications, joined the company in 2016 with the project of launching a new brand that would “save the old fashion but adhere to the sensibility should adapt to the present”. which ultimately became IAIOS. From the beginning, they knew that each model of the brand should have “a name and a story”. “We named the first design iaio (yayo) Amadeu, in honor of our great-grandfather, who took the big leap into nothingness and became a clothing manufacturer,” explains Gemma. In the words of Amadeu, this gave rise to the idea of choosing “a specific grandma or a specific nanny” as sponsor for each new entry in the brand’s catalog: “An older person from our environment who has a story to tell.”
This is how the sweaters dedicated to Tània Navarro, a 67-year-old transgender activist from Barcelona, were born; Mateu, maker and collector of spinning tops, who has just turned 93; Jaume, designer and draftsman from Canet de Mar, still active at 75; the centenarian Joan Carulla, a committed vegetarian and pioneer of urban gardens, or the late godfather Isidro, who was an anarchist and prisoner of war. For some of the sweaters they have chosen famous sponsors, such as the Málaga dancer Bella Dora, the cartoonist and puppeteer Pilarín Bayés, the Italian educator Maria Montessori or the Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren, but the criterion that prevails, like almost everything here, is an initiative with so many roots relies on local seniors. “Almost everyone is excited by grandfather's stories,” argues Mateu, “and our idea was to recover all this wealth of experience and offer it to those who buy our clothes.” “Every year,” explains Gemma, “we renew between one A quarter and a third of our catalog, so that new sweaters are constantly coming onto the market in limited editions between 48 and 60 units per model, behind each model there is the corresponding Yayo.” ” .
Pere Diumaró on the terrace of his house, where he wrote his four books on Granollers.Vanessa Montero
The latest to join the family and wear a jersey with their name are Pere Diumaró, 93, and Teresa Muga, 78. Pere and I met in the place where he grew up, an apartment overlooking the central plaza de La Corona, in the commercial axis of the center of Granollers. The Diumarós ran Can Peret, a traditional tavern at the foot of the square, but he preferred to seek work in a local workshop, where, he tells us, he devoted his days “to dressing dolls,” a wide variety of them personalized toys, with author's seal, which Amadeu Barbany describes as “authentic filigree works”. After his retirement, Pere, at the suggestion of the local historian, began to document in detail the past of the Plaza de la Corona, the nearby bell tower and in general the last corner of this corner, just over a square kilometer from the center of Granollers, where he spent his life. The result of this careful and comprehensive documentation work are four books, which Pere presents with enthusiasm and a certain pride. They are his personal contribution to the historical memory of a city that has found in him a passionate chronicler.
Teresa Muga, 78 years old, wears “her” sweater next to the car in which she drives to an emergency shelter every day. Vanessa Montero
A few minutes away, at the El Xiprer residence, Teresa Muga is waiting, who continues to come daily to volunteer in this soup kitchen and shelter that another experienced resident of Granollers, Mercè Riera, has set up in her family home. Teresa is an emotional and talkative woman who cares about those around her (“my sister, my nephew”) and still finds time to devote to her other family, that of El Xiprer. She cooks, serves, sweeps, mops and organizes for them. “Live and learn” with them. He assures that life gives him. “What would I do without them, without my people? Even on the worst days, when problems overwhelm me, I walk through this door and all my illnesses are healed. I am happy. “I feel useful.” For Amadeu Barbany, who acts as his assistant in this kitchen “full of life and anecdotes,” Teresa is “a true reference for solidarity in Granollers.”
Back upstairs at Dracs, where Gemma creates her designs, the Barbanys pose again and remember the sentence by the essayist Jules Renard that serves as their motto: “Old age has arrived when you start to say that you are still yourself never felt so young.” “. Amadeu interprets it in a positive sense: “We are surrounded by very old people who retain their worries, their energy and their enthusiasm.” Be people of all ages. In addition to a family society that, according to Gemma, runs like clockwork: “My father and I share the basics: an idea, a philosophy and some values.”