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She was one of the first girls in Spain to upload her looks to the internet with no other baggage than her interest in fashion, catwalks and magazines (she studied marketing and communication at the IED), and to become so popular on social networks as for to be able to live on it. Over the years, Gigi Vives (Barcelona, 1994) has been polishing his style, reaching very elaborate, minimalist and refined images, closer to a fashion editorial than to the stripped and eclectic naturalness that abounds today on Instagram. She is taking her first steps as a celebrity stylist (actress Begoña Vargas has put herself in her hands and assures that more are coming), although collaborations with fashion and beauty brands are her main work.
Precisely in the presentation of the new Cordorniú campaign with Amaia Salamanca, after participating in a debate with her and with the writer Elvira Sastre and the artist Alejandra G. Remón on the occasion of the Day of the Entrepreneurial Woman, we spoke with the young ‘influencer’ .
How has the world of fashion influencers and prescribers evolved since you started five years ago?
It started in a very concrete way, in which we all published along the same lines and worked with the same brands. Over time, and by valuing what we did and becoming a job, each one has made her own style. We have gone from being people to becoming small brands. I include myself in that. I started following the tide and now I’m going a little more upstream, to my ball. I think I have earned the power to choose who I want to work with. Before I did not have that power, but now I do because I am more established and have been for years. It’s a bit like my reward, to do what I like and communicate in my own way, and even come up with ideas myself. Usually it is the other way around: the brand gives you their idea and you have to take photos that fit their campaign. Now I can tell you how I want to interpret it and make it, I have more creative freedom.
You say that you are different. What is your style?
I have always prioritized that my profile was visually very aesthetic, that it had a very clear and careful line. That is the grace that I find in all this, what I like. I want everything to have a harmony, I focus a lot on publishing beautiful photos and that the product is displayed in the most attractive way possible, and that for brands is a pleasure because I take it as if they were micro-campaigns. My style is very editorial, the vast majority are studio photos, usually with a camera and editing is a process that I take very seriously and that takes time. It is not a total instagramer account, instantaneous, but very worked. In some cases I come to seek inspiration. to make me ‘moodboards’… everything is very editorial, like a mini-magazine of its own.
There is, however, a mainstream more linked to the natural and the spontaneous, bathed in the spirit that the ‘stories’ represent so well.
Yes. I manage to combine it well. I started out being more natural and close and I have not lost that, because in ‘stories’ I do speak and give my opinion, although in photos I am more serious and more natural. It’s my style, to combine both.
You were speaking before the time the photos take. How much do you dedicate?
Many days each. We ask the brand for plenty of time to work, because I am also very slow about everything, I think a lot, I think about it a lot. I find it difficult for the result to be like the idea I have, I am a very perfectionist and that plays tricks on me. But it is a very interesting process, which I know not everyone follows, but that I take it that way. Behind a job like mine there is much more than what people think. I collaborate with photographers friends, we rent studios and there is also styling, makeup and editing work. They are mini productions. I can spend a week and a half to take a single photo for a brand. Then there are others who do it with the mobile and also have a lot of ‘engagement’, they are different ways of doing it. I enjoy it this way and people value it, you see the results.
How do you see current fashion? On the one hand it seems that it takes everything and on the other it continues to talk about trends
I see her more changeable than ever. Although I am checking a regression to what was worn before. The 70s and 80s are back, and even the 2000s, which for me was one of the worst times in fashion. I have an 18-year-old sister and I am amazed at what the new generations wear. But retro takes a lot, it is applied in everything, in photo editing, in music. It’s funny how all these trends are mixed in the same look.
How to know what to wear then, or define your own style
There should be a balance between what is trending and what you like, what makes you feel good and what you are comfortable with. When you dress only for trend, even if it looks great, it shows that it is forced. I dress in a very specific way and if they take me out of that I find myself uncomfortable, so I prioritize feeling myself. I am one hundred percent of suits, but I like trends and I dare more with them in accessories, shoes, bags and glasses.
And do you have any resounding no, something you can say you’ll never wear?
Yes. The ‘crop tops’. I find them unsightly even if you have a great body. Victoria Beckham also said it recently. Everything that is very tight top, I do not see.
You have been summoned to this event on the occasion of the entrepreneurial woman. Do you feel like one?
I am not very vindictive in networks, but with this celebration of the successes of other women and creative women who are committed to their projects and their dreams, I feel more identified than ever. It is a world full of insecurities, doubts, often even their own, and it is important that brands and influencers exert their influence on these things. The style is a plus. If we can go a step further with causes that you feel identified with, it is important. In the end I am a woman who started in something that nobody understood, about which my partner told me that it would never be a job and that many doubted, even I even thought if I had lost three years of my life dedicating myself to instagram. We have to support each other, men and women, and not be afraid.
How do you handle the pressure for the image that abounds so much in social networks?
I have a love-hate for social media. I love the creative part, but what it takes to be stuck in this world of constant comparisons, of a physique that people take for granted and this obsession with ‘wellness’ is very exhausting and very frustrating for me, also because you You set expectations that neither you meet nor ask of others, but you do ask of people on social networks.
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