Move Over, Milan

Move Over, Milan

Sure, Barcelona's ladies have always effortlessly adorned themselves for the most important runway of all: the street. But now the fashion scene itself is receiving overdue props, rivaling other European capitals as the home of high fashion. With a legacy in textile creation, avant-garde architecture, and playful design, Barcelona is clearly ready to don the haute couture mantle.

Ever since the 1992 Olympic Games blew the lid off any lingering doubts about Barcelona's contemporary creative potential, new clothing designers and boutiques have been proliferating. The late September Barcelona Fashion Week has taken its place as one of Europe's most important fashion meets, alongside those of Paris, London, and Milan. Largely stripped of public financing, it's forged a path of its own relying largely on young local designers as well as traditional heavyweights such as Antonio Miró, Armand Basi, Gonzalo Comellas, and Adolfo Domínguez. Even top-name Madrid designers such as Victorio & Lucchino, Miriam Ocáriz, and Soul Aguilar, citing the Catalan capital's innovative, younger image, prefer to show in Barcelona instead of at Madrid's Cibeles fashion event.

Meanwhile, the hot street styles admired around town for so long have jumped to center stage. Bread & Butter Barcelona (BBB), begun in Berlin and described as a street-fashion trade show, has been so successful in Barcelona that winter and summer events are now built into the city calendar for the foreseeable future. The January 2008 BBB brought 1,000 designers from over 100 countries and some 100,000 visitors to multifaceted proceedings encompassing art, architecture, music, dance, catwalks, tastings, piercings, body art, and frenzied spates of sponsored parties—for registration and tickets, go to www.breadandbutter.com. The B&B Brand Bible lists more than 1,000 designers from Custo and Desigual to undergrounders such De Puta Madre, Kult, and System5.

And the shops! From local clothing stars Zara and Custo to whimsical design objects at BD (Barcelona Design) or Vinçon, to old crafts standbys such as La Manual Alpargatera or S'Avarca de Menorca, Barcelona is becoming as famous for shopping as for architecture and design. El Born, the old waterfront district tucked behind Santa Maria del Mar in the Barri de la Ribera teems with young artisans and designers; the Eixample, the midtown grid labyrinth of Art Nouveau architecture, is rife with innovatively designed shops selling equally original items of all kinds; and the outlying villages of Gràcia and Sarrià are becoming bite-sized boutique havens with much more to admire than quiet streets and leafy palms.