SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA – Fashion designer Manuel Veranes, 26, sits on top of his cutting table beside a pile of jumbled fabric. He shakes the water droplets off his clothes from the rain outside and begins to eat his lunch, a vegetarian Salvadoran “pupusa” bought from a nearby stall in downtown San José, Costa Rica’s capital.
With boxes, black plastic bags, sewing machines and furniture stacked on one side, the makeshift studio sits on the second floor above a trendy new bar in downtown San José. Veranes shares the space with Marilyn Castellón, a 29-year-old furniture and interior designer and his partner in Casa Tripartito***, an artistic collective.
Castellón works on her laptop a few feet to the right, a 3-D model on her screen of a showroom she is designing. To the left is one of Veranes’ sewing students, focused on making something from red spandex and faux leather.
Veranes says that Casa Tripartito***’s current makeshift office also serves as his temporary home. He and and Castellón used to live and work together in the collective’s previous house and workshop. While they look for a new space, the owners of the bar below have loaned them this floor.
Both Veranes and Castellón are part of the growing Costa Rican design movement. In recent years, independent design stores have emerged around the city, providing locals and visitors a way to buy locally designed and made products that show a more urban side to crafts.
Last year also marked the first design exposition and conference for artists and designers to show and sell their work as well as take part in a conference and workshops. Called Diseño 10, it was organized by the Museum of Modern Art and Design, the Ministry of Culture and Youth, and the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Commerce. Veranes and Castellón both participated.
Casa Tripartito***’s success has been marked by monthly events in which Veranes and Castellón showcase their work, interviews and half-page articles in La Nación, a national newspaper, and sales and contracts they receive individually and together.
They are proving that it is possible to making livings as artists here.
Veranes says he was a bioenergetics therapist studying fashion design on the side when he jumped at the chance to be in a fashion show in 2005. He quickly whipped up a collection, and his career and life as a fashion designer blossomed from there.
Veranes says it was a time marked by saying, “Yes,” to any opportunity that came his way.
“I met everyone and did everything,” he says.
That year, he and two other fashion designers formed a collective called Tripartito*** to design attractive and functional clothing.
Castellón says she also got into the business by taking a risk and pouring herself into her art. She quit her job as an event planner for an advertising agency and dove into a full-time furniture and space design project called Machine. She used her savings to buy materials and equipment and learned as she went.
“If I hadn’t done it this way, I wouldn’t have done it at all,” she says.
The Tripartito*** collective eventually expanded toward design and production of costumes for dance, advertising, film and theater. Teaming up with Castellón through Machine and La Piel de Naranja, a dance troupe with a production unit, the collective became Casa Tripartito***.
It’s currently just Veranes and Castellón in the collective. They hold their events at bars while they look for a new studio. Driven by collaboration, the events provide exposure for Casa Tripartito*** and any collaborators and business for the bars who host them.
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