Lutz Huelle and Delpozo end creative partnership

The relationship between Delpozo and Lutz Huelle has not been an easy one. Just over two and a half years after the Spanish fashion brand appointed Huelle as creative director in place of Josep Font, the designer who had been tasked with propelling the label into a new era, Delpozo and Huelle have finally parted ways. A collaboration that has ended without even the first Delpozo collection by Huelle seeing the light of day in a catwalk show.

“While the House of Delpozo is in negotiations, and the future is not clear at the moment, it is time to go our separate ways,” posted the German designer on his Instagram account, adding he wanted to “say thank you to every single person whom I had the pleasure and privilege to work with in Madrid,” the city where the Spanish luxury label’s headquarters and design studio are located. “The enthusiasm, energy and kindness I encountered every day, the level of craftsmanship and the incredible talent of everybody in the studio made my time there unique and unforgettable,” continued Huelle in his post.

“I loved the idea of Delpozo as a collection in the purest sense of the word: beautiful, timeless pieces that would last a lifetime and would be worn on special occasions as well as on an everyday basis - the idea of couture but transported into our busy lives of the ‘Here and Now’...” wrote Huelle, who has been showing his own collections for his eponymous label since 2000.

Contacted by FashionNetwork.com, Huelle said the following about the end of his collaboration with the label owned by Spanish group Perfumes y Diseño: “I simply hope that everything will go well for Delpozo and that it will continue to thrive. It’s such a fine fashion house (...) The timing just wasn’t right.” Huelle made no secrets of his desire to be able to stage a physical catwalk show in Paris again.

Huelle was named creative director at a turbulent time for Delpozo. After growing in size and stature for a few years, showing at London Fashion Week and opening several stores in Asia and the Middle East, at the start of 2019 Delpozo made some 20 employees redundant, and announced it was looking for investors.

The company, which has been controlled since 2011 by the Trolez family, owner of perfumery group Perfumes y Diseño, did not succeed in striking a deal with a potential new majority shareholder. In the wake of these failed negotiations, at the end of 2019, Delpozo closed down its international stores, including its flagships, bade farewell to then-CEO Pablo Badía, and even put up for sale its excess inventory at bargain-basement prices.

The only output from the collaboration with Huelle was a small capsule collection in partnership with Anthropologie, presented at the start of last year, featuring echoes of the style of the label founded in 1974 by Jesús del Pozo, reinterpreted through the German designer’s eyes. While waiting to see how Delpozo’s future will play out with Perfumes y Diseño, which recently bought a minority stake in menswear label Oteyza, Huelle shared on Instagram a series of pictures showing what his first collection for Delpozo would have looked like.

Lutz Huelle and Delpozo end creative partnership

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