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The decor of your our stores and stand displays incorporate a baroque style with velvet upholstery, how did this look originate?
J.: What we had in mind was an industrial context – very simple walls, cables on show etc – with fine wood and velvet, and mosaics on the floor. Then we found a very baroque couch which we loved and we put it in a new setting. It was really “us” and captured our essence. Velvet is the richest of fabrics and it features in all our shops and winter collections.
G .: Our shop décor blends contemporary with decadent detail. In Madrid, we’ve kept the iron pillars and a patio in the background with the walls covered in ivy. In Seville, there are Andalusian elements, like some old railings we’ve painted in our own way. We like to preserve old things by updating them. My son is the architect and he knows our tastes perfectly so he was able to give us just what we wanted in our shops and our Bilbao workshop. Our boutiques keep that workshop look. They now sport the new logo, with its free and easy lines, and our brand colours: green, mauve and fuchsia.

Jota + Ge has a broad sales network with 650 outlets, how did you reach this number?
G: We’ve gradually extended our distribution. The initial aim was to make pretty, coherent collections which we could enjoy and get money to pay our bills. But things gradually took off, like the multi-brand retailers and we now work with 450 in Spain and 150 elsewhere in Europe. So we gradually created a sales network. Then we opened five of our own brand shops for image purposes.
J.: The first Jota + Ge POS was a shop in Barcelona which had just opened. That was 24 years ago. We were new to the business and the shop was too. We’ve been very lucky. It was never our intention to earn a lot of money.
G.: We always present our collections at the SIMM show in Madrid and we’ve also been at Fashion Coterie in New York, and at various exhibitions in the UK and Portugal.

What can you tell us about the winter collection?
G.: We were inspired by Surrealism which came about after seeing an exhibition at the Guggenheim in Bilbao. It was a Saturday and we saw it together because, as well as designing as a team, we go places together too. That’s where we got the trompe d’oeil idea, the mixture of figures and architectural forms in the prints, which even includes our Jota + Ge sofa. In our Jeans line, we’ve gone for pure Surrealism, putting the spotlight on the world of dreams.
J.: We like everything about the Surrealist period: the fashion, the characters…. Again we’ve gone for unique garments because we want each of them to have something special about it. There’s always very careful attention to detail and finish. You can see that the people behind the garments have thought about what they are doing, designed them carefully and put everything into the project.

What’s the next big challenge for Jota + Ge?
G.: We want to step up our presence in Russia, where we already have some customers. And recently, we’ve gone into Greece. We’ve always wanted to enjoy our work over and above everything else and we’re not in any hurry.

JOTA + GE CLOSE-UP:
Number of employees: 40
Export rate: 15%
Production: 600 designs and 130,000 garments a year
Main markets: Ireland (31%), Benelux (29%) and Portugal (20%). Also operates in Italy, Russia and Greece
Points of sale: five brand shops and 450 POS in Spain, 150 international POS
Trade shows: SIMM (Madrid)

www.jotamasge.com