A CRAFTMANSHIP HISTORY
Founded in 2012 by K.S. Snelders & P.J.E. Snelders.
Casa Barcelonete refers to their parents house where they started an atelier. One of them got rejected from the Denim School Amsterdam but that didn't stop them from learning the craft.
They started producing couture, bags and accessoires from high quality fabrics and leathers. After several trips and living in Barcelona, the city became the source of input for all collections and designs.
The district: La Barceloneta was the area that changed the future of the atelier. The culture / vibe / architecture / colors / etc. impressed them and from that moment on, they knew the brand should be called: Barcelonete. It was the view (seen from Platja de Sant Sebastia) of the Vela Hotel (also known as W-Hotel Barcelona), that inspired the designers to design the B of the brand name with a notch.
The house signature colors are based on the colors of the buildings in Barcelona: beige walls/stones and terracotta color roofs.
The two brothers like to remain anonymous because they believe everyone who's involved: productionworkers, stylists, manufacturers, patternmakers, photographers, models and so forth make Barcelonete the colorful, playful and artisanal brand we know today is.
FROM MONOGRAM TO THE EIXAMPLE PATTERN
Around 1850 the population of Barcelona was growing fast. The walls that protected the city became a problem. The narrow streets were a breeding ground for diseases. Ildefons Cerda was the engineer that came up with a plan to build outside the walls. The expansion (in Catalan: Eixample) was a design of octagons that ensured that everything was well ventilated, traffic had enough visibility and the sun could reach all the corners. In 1859 the construction started.
Everytime the two designers came to Barcelona, the Eixample pattern stood out. They came up with the idea to transform their monogram into the Eixample pattern. Nowadays it's used for all over prints and canvas leather prints.
THE VENTANA: A COMBINATION OF NATURE AND ARCHITECTURE
Antoni Gaudi was the famous architecture that lid up the city with his creations around 1990. One of them is the church: Sagrada Familia.
The shape of the windows of the church were the foundation for the two designers to fill up the gap of a missing patch / logo.
To translate the windows into a Barcelonete design they had to cut the window in half. But why did they cut the design in half?
During their visit the color of the sunbeam was changed by stained glas of the windows and it reminds them of the sunsets at La Barceloneta. This corresponds with a quote from Antoni Gaudi himself: sunshine is natures best painter.
The two brothers putted their imagination of the sunsets together with the window design of Gaudi and the logo / patch: 'Ventana' was born. Ventana is Spanish for window.
The Ventana is shown below and is incorporated in the designs in almost every collection.
THE WELL-KNOWN MOSAIC PATTERN
The mosaic designs in Barcelona are generally by Gaudi. The playful style was the base for the Barcelonete mosaic pattern, which is shown below.
To show some love for the work of Gaudi, the two designers of Barcelonete blended the mosaic tiles designs in 2014 into a playful Barcelonete mosaic design. The recognizable letter: B of the brand was multiplied: lengthwise and crosswise placed in a heart. This design became one of the bestsellers of the brand.
