Photographer and Clan founder Ana Larruy prints her own images onto simple and sustainably-made stretch fabric tops and dresses
- What is it? Clan is an emerging brand founded by Barcelona-born, London-based photographer Ana Larruy, who prints her own images onto simple tops and dresses
- Why do I want it? Larruy prints her images onto fabric produced in her family’s factory in Mataro, Spain. Each piece is made using recycled plastics and produced in small runs to avoid waste
- Where can I get it? Clan is stocked in London’s 50m, Lisbon’s Auné Store, Litmus and Fysika in Japan and Reele Store, South Korea, as well as the brand’s online store
What is it? In 2017, Barcelona-born photographer Ana Larruy decided to print one of her portraits on a piece of stretch fabric. While wrapping it around her body in the garden of her Peckham home she noticed something unusual. The model’s eye had stretched over her chest and the effect was captivating. “It was a bit weird to have an eye over your chest and there was something about it which I didn’t love but I was attracted to,” Larruy explains. “I thought, what is this? What can I find here?” By 2018 she’d decided, with the help of her friend Mariona Valdés Torrella, to make a small collection of clothes printed with her portraits to see how they would wrap around the body.
It was a fitting medium for Larruy’s photography: both sides of her family are involved in the Spanish textile industry. On her mother’s side, her great-grandparents opened up a textile factory in their back garden in the small town of Masnou, Spain. After her grandfather studied engineering, he became obsessed with textiles and pioneered the development of Spanish stretch fabrics in the 1950s. It was this rich family history which led to the fledgling brand’s name – Clan.
“I remember I would go with my mum to Paris to see fabrics and my grandfather would be standing there touching the women’s underwear,” she laughs. “But it was amazing to see how attached he was.” Her grandmother on her father’s side started the Spanish swimwear brand Guillermina Baeza in 1980 (of which Larruy is an avid collector) and it was at a textile trade show that Larruy’s parents eventually met.
“Doing Clan, for me, is a way of keeping the family business going,” she says. “I’ve always been super attached to tradition and family, it’s just a slightly updated way of doing it.” Her mother still works in the family textile factory but Larruy doesn’t believe any of her other relatives are interested in keeping it going.
As well as it being a family affair, Larruy uses Clan as a way to experiment and collaborate a little more than her photography work allows. “There’s loads of photographers that I think are really amazing or filmmakers and stylists – people that I haven’t worked with,” she says. To those people, Larruy gives pieces from Clan’s collections, allowing them to interpret them in their own way.
Why do I want it? Given Larruy’s family history, she’s always been interested in clothes and how garments are put together. The beauty of the stretch fabrics – and the shapes she and her pattern-cutter Patty Maña have created – make their core designs look good on every body. Although she designs primarily for women like herself she loves to see men interact with the prints, too. The designs take on a different character and emphasis with each.
Each Clan piece is made from polyester and elastane recycled from sea plastic, making it as sustainable as stretch fabrics can possibly be. The fabric is then printed with her photographs in her family’s factory in the town of Mataro, just 30 kilometres north-east of Barcelona. She only gets about 200 metres printed at a time, something she understands she’s lucky to be able to do – most factories won’t bother producing this little of one print as it’s not profitable.
The pieces are then produced in small runs, carefully cut and sewn in order to make sure they don’t over-produce. “It’s not like we go too crazy,” she says. “I don’t want to have thousands of clothes and be like ‘where do I put this now because no one wants it!’”
But Clan has nonetheless developed a cult following, despite the fact that back in 2018 Larruy “didn’t know what Clan was going to be”. Fans include the Hadid sisters, Kylie Jenner and former AnOther Magazine cover star Solange Knowles, who wore the Onda dress for her performance at the Getty Museum in November 2019.
Where can I get it? Clan is stocked in London’s 50m, Lisbon’s Auné Store, Litmus and Fysika in Japan and Reele Store, South Korea, as well as the brand’s web store
