From Baja to Barney's

Velasco Couture founder Rogelio Velasco has traveled far from his childhood in northern Mexico. Today, his stunning dresses sell for upwards of $12,000 USD in his Manhattan atelier and at toney retailers like Barney’s. They’re worn by celebrities and socialites like Janet Jackson, Tribeca Film Fest director Jane Rosenthal, Elisabeth Johnson (of Johnson & Johnson), and actress América Ferrara. A recent Velasco smash was Meryl Streep’s 2006 Academy Awards gown, which got her on People magazine’s bestdressed list: before Velasco, her outfits were routinely labeled dowdy and sexless.

He lives the fashionista good life: awards shows, firstclass travel, and rooms full of breathtaking models. The best part might be that he’s still just unfamous enough to live untrammeled by too much hype— gadding about New York with noncelebrity friends and sticking with the cozy East Village apartment he loved when he was “nobody.”

It all began in Baja California. Rogelio is the thirteenth of sixteen children, born in 1960 to a traditional Mexicali family. Mom was a mom and Dad ran the company that brought garrafones for drinking water to the region in burro-drawn wagons.

The sewing began in the 1970s. One of his sisters was attempting to fashion some “designer jeans,” when Rogelio, then 13, asked to give it a shot. He hasn’t stopped designing since, and at 18 he was doing his own fashion shows (a line of rather brief swimwear was a hit). He became the designer to Mexicali’s grandees, who called on him for everything from gala formalwear to first communion frocks. Commissions also included that most Mexican of fashions, the quinceañera dress, the “haute couture” moment almost every Mexican girl experiences no matter how humble her background.

With a degree in civil engineering— good for cantilevering a strapless or hanging crinolines—Rogelio studied fashion design in the Dominican Republic and hit New York in 1986. After years as right-hand man to Isaac Mizrahi during that designer’s glory days (a long-haired Rogelio is everywhere in the Mizrahi documentary Unzipped), he started Velasco Couture in 2003.

In the Mexicali Rogelio remembers, people looked north. “If you lived on the border in the 70s and 80s, you had a special passport”— long since eliminated—“and crossed back and forth with no hassles. No one locked their doors or worried about drug cartels.” Was it difficult being the Mexicali boy with a talent for dressmaking? Characteristically sanguine, Rogelio says no. Machistas bullied the “artistic” kids with the usual epithets and aggressions, but the designer remembers that after dark many of those same toughs would come looking for less typically macho tenderness.

Rogelio’s mother never demanded explanations or confessions; she seemed simply to understand. “She would have all my friends to the house and cook for them,” he recalls. “Everyone was welcome and everyone was equal.” In those days the “gang” included transsexuals, lots of dancers, and even some really sweet straight kids. In Mexicali, glamour and entertainment trumped moral punctilio.

While Velasco remembers his hometown with fondness, he says it’s a long way from Baja to Barney’s. “Mexicali women also demanded a lot more sex and color in their clothes,” he chuckles. When I suggest that a Manhattan socialite carries a bit of quinceañera on her back when she wears Velasco to her brilliant event, he denies it. “My tastes have changed—refined—unrecognizably. And you won’t find the study and craftsmanship I put into my work at the local dressmaker’s.” He disavows nothing, but his taste and technique have moved beyond the bikinis and bridesmaid dresses of twenty-five years ago.

Upon reflection, he does say the work in Mexicali helps him today. His early days as dressmaker to its grand señoras—no less demanding or interested in social triumph than New Yorkers—attuned him to the imperatives, both spoken and unarticulated, of his clients. Understanding these nuances, Velasco creates the dress he knows is right for the woman. “But the client walks away certain she was always in control,” he says, grinning good-naturedly.

Life on the border has always been provisional, raffish, and informal. Having grown up where social distinctions were less rigid than they are in Mexico City (in Mexicali family and servants ate at the same table, for instance), he feels no need to preen or sneer. “You have to respect everyone,” he says, “from the poorest immigrant seamstress to Queen Rania of Jordan (one of Velasco’s customers).” In a milieu known for megalomania, jealousy, and just plain bitchiness, Rogelio never mentions rivals or enemies.

And he remains patiently polite when pressed on the quinceañera influence. How can you get away from Mexico’s eye-popping bridal shop culture? In next season’s dresses, how about more sequins, or feathers, or a less subdued palette? Maybe matching parasols…

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with feathers or sequins or color. You just have to know how to use them,” he replies. He says nothing about the parasols.

Michael Parker-Stainback can be reached at michael.parker3@yahoo.com.mx.