Analia Aguilar has a lot of American customers. She owns Shoplosophy, a luxe Mexican resort wear shop that sells everything from swimsuits to dresses to sarongs. Aguilar sources pieces from designers all over Latin America.
“The idea was, in one place, you find everything for the beach,” she says. However, besides a showroom in León, Mexico, Aguilar doesn’t have a physical store. Many Americans—especially Texans—will shop Aguilar’s clothes at Shoplosophy pop-ups in Cabo San Lucas, but many don’t realize her online store can ship to the U.S., too.
Aguilar is not alone. Many Mexican brands struggle with growing American customers who want to shop their merchandise but don’t know how, says Aberlado Marcones, who founded LuxuryLab Global, Latin America’s first luxury market intelligence forum. “We see many North Americans coming to Mexico and buying this stuff,” he says, “but they don’t know where to buy it, how to find it.”
So, Marcones is making it easier. LuxuryLab has partnered with Galleria Dallas to gather some of Mexico’s top designers and brands in a four-day shopping pop-up at the mall from September 22–25. The Hispanic Heritage Month event will bring more than a dozen brands, like Doizpe, Piel Canela, Maia Hats, Raquel Orozco, and Shoplosophy.
At the event, there will be a mix of accessible and more expensive products, Marcones says. Customers can browse the booths, buy or pre-order pieces, and get to know the designers first-hand. “They can talk to the designer, they can find what they are doing,” he says. “They can know a little bit better the process, how they are producing it.”
The goal of the pop-up, he says, is to help the designers and business owners make connections here, so they can one day open a storefront stateside or grow their clientele. For Aguilar, she just wants to get in front of her customers and let them know that they can ship her pieces to the U.S. It’ll also help expose her to new customers.
“I [am] so excited to go there and to see my clients and to meet them,” she says, “and I think that they’re gonna love it.”
While the Galleria pop-up is at the heart of the weekend, Marcones says the four-day event will show “what Mexico is doing, not only in terms of design and fashion, but also in terms of gastronomy, architecture, and art.” Among other events, there’s a dinner at The Mexican and on September 23, and LuxuryLab will lead a guided tour of the Latino Cultural Center’s “Yanga and the AfroMexican Experience” exhibition.
The ultimate hope of all these events is to showcase the Mexico’s history, culture, and what it has in terms of sophistication,” Marcones says. “It’s not only tacos or mariachis.”
Noon–6 p.m. Sept. 22–25. Galleria Dallas, level 1, across from Gucci; 13350 Dallas Pkwy.
Author
