Area CG’s Fernando Rius says luxury is not about buying something expensive, it is about understanding the culture, history, and time invested Clutch Fire

Reading “A Career in Fashion,” the autobiography of the celebrated Bill Cunningham (published in Spanish by Editorial Superflua), fills the reader with a healthy envy. There are figures who trace astonishing character arcs with their lives and seem to live more than one life. Cunningham was a milliner, a young salesman in a New York department store, a columnist for Women’s Wear Daily and, in the final stage of his life- the one that launched him to stardom on social media- a street-style photographer famed for criss-crossing the Big Apple on his bicycle in his blue jacket. The life of Fernando Rius, who founded the agency Area Comunicación Global in 1995, has something of the same quality.

A conversation with Rius and a simple question (“how did you get started in this?”) is enough to realise that he has also lived many lives. He was involved in the launch and development of Cabás, which could be described as Madrid’s first “concept store,” stocking pieces by Issey Miyake, Azzedine Alaïa, Francis Montesinos, and Adolfo Domínguez. He was buying director at Loewe, working alongside Enrique Loewe, and, in Vogue Spain’s early years, he wrote runway reports and designer interviews for the title.

Three decades ago, Fernando Rius shaped a communications agency which, without abandoning its family character and boutique spirit, has established itself beyond Spain’s borders, with a team of fifty people and offices in Mexico City and Lisbon, in addition to Madrid. As the agency marks its 30th anniversary, having specialised in the luxury segment since its inception, FashionNetwork.com talks to its founder about the past, present, and future of the sector.

FNW: How did you come up with the idea of creating a communications agency at a time when this concept hardly existed in Spain?

Fernando Rius: When I found myself in need of reinvention, I realised that I had very comprehensive experience, from dressing a window to heading a brand’s buying, doing trunk shows, writing for a magazine, producing fashion shoots… I knew the whole process, from the conception of a fabric to its sale, including the creation of desire through a publication. That had been my experience for 18 years and the logical next step was to set up a consultancy. All this has taken shape over 30 years to create what Area is today. In the early days, I didn’t have the clarity or vision I have now.

FNW: And how did your first clients come?

F. R.: Someone spoke about me in Italy. I had excellent contacts from my time at Condé Nast, and a team in Italy asked whether I would handle communications for their brand. At the time, I wasn’t entirely sure what they were asking of me, but I said yes. That brand was Tod’s, and it was my first client, along with Calvin Klein, which was entering a new chapter. They asked me to organise an event in Madrid for the opening of their boutique on Ortega y Gasset, with Kate Moss as the special guest.

I launched the agency with those two clients, plus consultancy for Loewe and for Zegna. I worked with a Spanish designer named Roberto Verino, and with another—Roberto Torretta—who had not yet launched his brand; I began advising him, and two years later he took to the Cibeles runway. Then came the CityTime group, Ralph Lauren, Gucci, and Burberry. Over the years, the agency has grown around the fashion sector, and also lifestyle.

FNW: How have you managed to stay focused amid this growth?

F. R.: We have had fascinating clients, from 30-year-old premium spirits to music boxes that take a year to make and cost as much as a plane. We’ve handled brands, products and projects that have given us a unique inside view of luxury. We have worked with major houses, but always in very close, almost family-like settings, where we have been able to engage in very direct dialogue with the brands and their creators.

This has given us a very privileged insight because we have experienced true luxury. Luxury is not buying something expensive; it is understanding the culture, the history, the time that lies behind each product.

FNW: In the last 30 years the world of communication has changed a lot, largely thanks to (or because of) technology. How do you get along with it?

F. R.: We have always tried to be very consistent with the principles that led me to create the agency. We go hand in hand with technology, but we don’t let it dominate us. We embrace the new: we have had an office in the metaverse for three years; we did a “press day” with augmented reality in the middle of the pandemic because we wanted to allow journalists, who were at home, to take a virtual- but almost physical- trip to our offices and to the world that had shut down at that time: the catwalk shows, the showrooms, and travel. Now, of course, we use artificial intelligence, but with an internal code of ethics that the team has to respect. What we cannot do is allow artificial intelligence to supplant the human brain and our ability to think- and to make mistakes.

FNW: Historically, Spain has not been a big market for luxury. What is it like to work in the sector in this country?

F. R.: Spain is now far more interesting than before due to geographic, social, cultural, and economic shifts. There are people coming to invest, but Spain has never been a country that has contributed in any radical way to the growth of the big brands. We do our bit, but we are not China, the United Kingdom or the United States. That gives you a very special perspective because you learn to live with your reality: we have to hold our own against the United States and all the big European- and, of course, Asian- capitals when it comes to results or delivering what is asked of us. But we work for a market that represents a very small percentage of the revenues of the big firms. That teaches you to be tremendously dynamic, efficient, and competitive with lean structures. And it forces you to learn to survive, but above all to be creative in a state of, shall we say, permanent crisis.

FNW: If we talk about crises, in the last three decades the sector and the economy have gone through a few. How have you navigated them?

F. R.: Area has so far survived the September 11 attacks, the fall of Lehman Brothers, and Covid, which doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a crash tomorrow that wipes us out. I mean we have survived all that by adapting and being enormously flexible. It is true that, in 2014, I began to seriously consider that Area needed to diversify risk and I realised that I couldn’t expand either into the United States or further within Europe because my clients were all European or North American. I could see that some of our clients already wanted to enter Latin America, so in 2014 I went to Mexico, began exploring the market and, after various twists and turns, we opened a subsidiary that has now been operating for 11 years.

Mexico is a very dynamic market. And Mexico keeps you humble: when you think you have achieved something, you go back to square one and have to start all over again. It has been an absolutely fascinating experience and, to be very honest, it is what allowed us to survive times as hard as the Covid pandemic in 2020. We also have a small office in Portugal that we use to triangulate Iberia with Latin America.

FNW: With your experience and expert eye, how do you see the current situation of fashion and its near future?

F. R.: The future of fashion lies in restoring primacy to those who have the talent and in accepting that the mass market is a battlefield, but it must once again be nourished by the creative ideas of those who really take the risk, day in and day out, of putting a wild idea on the table. I think fashion has to go back to dressing “immense minorities.” I think the sector is going to experience an interesting catharsis in the coming years; the big groups will find themselves needing to start divesting not of loss-making brands, but of brands they cannot, or do not know how to, manage. And we have to give the power back to the creator, to the person who really has the ideas, and let them develop those ideas.

FNW: How do you envisage the next decades for Area?

F. R.: Growing steadily, seeking synergies, but always keeping two things: the family environment and a small structure. My motto is “think small” because, if you think small, you’ll create on a grand scale. I see Area, more than ever, as a human, humanist project, where technology can only be at the service of creativity and not the other way round. Obviously, I hope Area will outlive me, and that is the future I would like it to have.