Lamner is a sonorous name, perhaps somewhat difficult to pronounce the first time, but easy to remember. It is entirely made up. Not even its creator, Claudia Martínez Barcos (Castellón, 31 years old) knows very well how it crossed her mind. "I spent two months writing names in notebooks, I wanted something sharp," she recalls, smiling, in the office next to the Royal Palace that is given to her for the interview by those who help her grow and her relationships. Because for now she doesn't have an office. Random name, non-existent office... But she is focused on something else, on what she lives for and what she dreams of: pants. Pants and more pants fill coat racks, the table, the sewing machine and her thoughts, she wakes up, also asleep. Because that is the true soul of Lamner. The rest is accessory.

Martínez Barcos was born and grew up near the sea, but she came to the center of the peninsula to pursue a dream. And that it seemed that she was going for a psychologist (she finished her degree), even for a criminologist (there she already had a couple of pending subjects). “I realized that she was not vocational. What I wanted was to enjoy working”, she says. She saw him like this, from one day to the next. And what gave him that enjoyment was that: fashion, dressing differently, creating differently. She suckled him at her house since she was a child. Her mother, being middle class, without great luxuries, she points out, invested in clothes, dressed in a special way. "At school they called me Moschino", in reference to the Italian fashion firm, she remembers her, now amused, before not so much.

Then, one day, she had a revelation, she, who visualized herself as a Police inspector. She knew that fashion was her thing. There was no turning back. “I left Procedural and Criminal [Law] that same day”, she laughs amused. “Nothing stimulated me 100%, but when this came I told myself: 'I already have the idea, I already have the project'. Then Madrid became the place where she had to be, to train herself and form a fashion brand, her beloved Lamner, which has become her passion and her refuge, in what she likes to do the most in the world, where she doesn't care enter as many hours as needed. For her, this occupation is “sickly important” and she has decided to devote herself to it.

“I like to be self-taught”, admits Martínez Barcos. When she discovered that she had creativity, she took the plunge. She now creates very different garments. Yes, they are still pants: two legs joined by a central stripe and a button. But everything changes with them. The structure, the colors, the fabrics. There are two-tone ones, which mix suede with a thicker fabric or with a much finer one; there are those that have vinyl pieces; some, like the one she's wearing, have rounded hems, different. They are striking, but not grotesque.

“I hadn't thought about whether it was difficult or not... but it has been a challenge”, she recounts about that job that she compulsively continues to dream of many nights. She has trained with two teachers, an Ecuadorian tailor and a teacher, Isabel, with whom she has investigated most of the trade, the one that she does not want to lose. “I have learned that sewing is not based on hours, but based on desire”, she acknowledges about the almost two years of this professional adventure in the capital, a city to which she confesses “hooked”, as well as fundamental for make contacts.

There are already clients—some acquaintances, of whom she prefers not to reveal her name; she has made pieces for a model or for a singer to wear on tour, but not being presumptuous makes her avoid giving too many names—with a pair of Lamners in the closet, which they wear at events, hangouts or art gatherings, although she you don't want to limit them to special moments. She would like to dress from Nawja Nimri to the Haim sisters and musicians, "women who do different things for enjoyment" At the moment, she makes almost all of them to measure in Madrid, by hand and from a form found on her page website, although now it is going to open a point of sale in a store in Valencia for which it has prepared a small batch of garments "with standardized sizes". But the bulk is still made to measure, and for a price of between 200 and 350 euros. "I want it to be affordable," she defends. Not cheap, because it is still custom sewing where she easily invests 10 or 12 hours per garment, but it is acceptable.

She does not differentiate by seasons. If anything, in fabrics, thicker for the winter, lighter in the heat. Fabrics that, as she says, can also run out and then the client will have to choose another. It is what has the handmade sewing. For each one the process is different and so is the result. As is the body of each woman; she doesn't care if they're skinny or tall, or fat or short, "because the important thing is that they feel comfortable, and we work on that." For work, that is not.

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