Then, of course, there are the artisans: Gloria Guerrero Sanabria, Emelia Guerrero Sanabria, Daniela Jaramillo Guerrero, Karen Guerrero Sanabria, and Bibiana Crisanto Muñoz. Until Milan, they’d never left Mexico, but the designer intends to make them a part of the show. “We are planning on a performance, because for me, the brand is all about the people behind it, and I want to pay homage to them,” he says. “I don’t want to say too much, but they will open the show.”
Ruiz has so far built a modest but solid business with small, artisanal collections. “I don’t know how to mass produce. I don’t know how to maybe get into China and import and export,” he says. “What I know is these communities, so that’s the way I produce and create.” With a Milan show on the horizon, the designer is ready to enter the next phase of his brand, towing that fine line between hand-crafted, artisanal goods, and dipping his toe into the larger production demands of luxury wholesale.
Roots in resort
Neithan Herbert has historically focused on small collections sold in hotel boutiques rather than traditional wholesalers. “I was raised in a resort city, so I think my eye for fashion has always been resort,” he says. The opportunity arrived after a pop-up he held with other designers back in 2021, where a representative of Rosewood Hotels spotted Ruiz’s designs and asked to sell the pieces at one of the hotels’ boutiques. “We sold 300 pieces at that pop-up in a few days.”
A pop-up customer also recommended Neithan Herbert to a buyer for the boutique at Four Seasons Punta Mita, where Ruiz later held a pop-up of his own. The brand’s Four Seasons capsule sold out in almost a matter of weeks. Now, Neithan Herbert can be found across several hotels and boutiques across Mexico and the US. “Texas is a big market for me, Austin [in particular], a lot of retail stores there have consignment and emerging brands,” he says. “So that’s another way for us to grow.”
Following the Milan show, Ruiz is ready to enter more wholesale doors, but with a handful of retailers like those in Austin, who align with his small-batch production. “Everybody wants to do thousands of [units],” he says, “people aren’t thinking about small, unique and more personalized things.”
Already, he’s feeling boosted brand awareness from the Milan debut, with plenty of requests from press and buyers to attend the show. Ngomo is helping Ruiz on that front. “We didn’t know how to deal with buyers in Italy, because no one we know has ever entered Milan Fashion Week or has even done a showroom,” Ruiz says. “For the moment, I don’t believe in mass production. So what I’m trying to offer to all the buyers is to find a way to make made-to-measure, small drops, five of a kind, 10 of a kind, and continue with that exclusive way of selling.”
Photo: Courtesy of Neithan Herbert
