Meet Your Favorite Designer’s Favorite Designer

Abra Ortuño Perez is the man Jonathan Anderson and Simon Porte Jacquemus call when they need something special. Now he’s stepping out and stepping up with his own conceptual brand.

There is ABRA everywhere for the eyes to see. The ballet flats Rosalía wears to the farmer’s market? Those are by ABRA. Charli XCX’s custom pink dress? And her favorite studded pumps? Also ABRA. Viral sensations from the pandemic era, like the JW Anderson chain mule and the LOEWE balloon heel? Created with ABRA. JACQUEMUS’s mischevious double heels? Definitely ABRA—and so are some of JACQUEMUS’s first-ever shoes, with circle and square medallions.

If you’ve kept up with the luxury accessory market for the past decade, you’re familiar with the work of Abra Ortuño Perez without realizing it. The Spanish designer started his career working on accessories at JACQUEMUS in 2015, moving through roles at Givenchy, Kenzo, and Rabanne before branching out and consulting for JW Anderson, LOEWE, Coperni, and others in the late 2010s, leaving a trail of highly coveted viral items in his wake. “Very quickly some brands from LVMH started to reach out to me to say, ‘Who are you? How are you doing this?’” Ortuño Perez remembers of his early days in Paris.

“There was no master plan behind starting my brand [in 2019]. I started because I wanted to show what I can do and it kind of grew by itself,” he says. “I want to have this brand that is accessible but it’s also kind of hard to get. It worked by itself. There was not a marketing team, there was not a business plan. So it’s going with the flow. So let’s see where this takes us. Sometimes I dream of a day of someone coming and telling me, ‘I’m going to help you make this a massive company.’” He pauses. “But I think it would lose the essence of the brand. It would lose its magic.”Continuing to work with JACQUEMUS and JW Anderson gives Ortuño Perez the steady income to expand his brand at his pace and also explore other ideas tailored to each designer. “For me, Simon is playful, simple, minimal but very strong. Jonathan is very much a contemporary surrealist. I am more girly,” he says, laughing. “Maybe more pop. So it’s nice to get to design in all these worlds.

You might think he’s some kind of demented genius cooking up accessories to provoke the internet’s obsessions. (He does live and work from an entirely windowed apartment 21 stories into the sky in Paris, a singularly white building that looms over the eighteenth arrondissement like a heavenly lair.) But rather than try to compute virality or overanalyze what makes an It item, Ortuño Perez finds most inspiration just by looking at the sky.“I hope one day I will look back at my collections and I will be like, ‘Oh my god. Remember when I was sitting in my table seeing the sky and it became this simple, beautiful, product?’” he says, looking southward out those enormous windows, the sun breaking through a cloud.Born in Alicante, Spain, Ortuño Perez’s fate seems written in the stars—and in the shoes. His village was renowned for its shoemaking factories, and his parents operated a restaurant in the area that drew both festive locals and its share of tourists. When he was a teenager, he was introduced to Elena Cardona, a Barcelona native who worked with Martin Margiela on accessories. Quickly, she became his mentor and guide into the world of fashion.“The way she taught me to design was so smart. We never looked for other shoes to be inspired. We would look for the most random thing around us in the kitchen or wherever, and we would start the design from that,” he recalls. As such, the Margiela influence is strong. “Of course I’m completely influenced by him. Martin is probably the smartest designer in creating something so pure but so strong. I think he’s in my DNA as a designer.”

For his FW24 show presented at Paris Fashion Week, Ortuño Perez crafted clutches shaped like makeup palettes and earrings like makeup brushes and lipstick canisters. Simple white jersey was printed with fake cosmetic advertisements and naively draped into dresses—minimal, surreal, and subversive all at once. A collaboration with adidas left SL 72 sneakers almost untouched, just covered in tonal crystals. Nothing is overcomplicated or fussy. Nor is there some trick of the mind. What you see is what you get.

In a moment where participating in the fashion industry feels like gazing into a trick mirror, every product drop overmarketed to make brands seem like besties—evolving from 2021’s “MerchTainment” to the total Marvelization of brand marketing in 2024—ABRA is a brand that’s about what it sells. The products are the stars, instantly recognizable for their sweet subversions of classic styles. A Hollister-worthy preppy polo has a crystal platform heel emblazoned on its chest, accompanied by the word “chic.” A simple shoulder bag is trimmed in lethal spikes. Ballet flats are for boys and hoodie gowns are for everyone.“I love to see people wearing the clothes and accessories because they don’t see the brand as me,” Ortuño Perez says. “I’m a very shy person and I know who is watching. I work with some of the people I admire the most in design, and so I want them to be proud of what I make. I love Martin Margiela and he was exactly this. He was doing crazy stuff—but it’s not a joke. We are not trying to make a joke here. It’s not clothes for a video clip. It’s clothing that a normal woman can actually wear. You love the extremeness of the concept, but you don’t want to be in the street feeling uncomfortable.” What a relief to shop, to wear a brand that’s not measured in “heat,” “buzz,” or “virality”—dealing instead in wantable, wearable brilliance.

One reason ABRA can stay so impactful is because of its genuine intentions. Collections are drawn from different memories Ortuño Perez has of his sister and mother growing up in Spain, inspired by their beach days with giant palm tree prints and an inflatable orca blown up into a dress. The other is his reasonable approach to growth. “I make decisions that put me in a comfortable position. I don’t risk a lot, so I grow being realistic. I don’t want to explode it too soon,” he says.One thing you won’t see from ABRA? “Merchandising this brand like it’s a celebrity,” he says. Or becoming a celebrity himself. “I’m a great person,” he smirks, “but I’d rather people didn’t know who I am.” His design language is strong on its own; it doesn’t need any superfluous storytelling. “You don’t need to love me,” he laughs. “Love the brand! She’s there for you.”