A Conversation With Puerta Negra

Puerta Negra is a brand that lives between worlds where memory, heritage, and imagination converge. Named after a family home steeped in stories and time, it embodies the idea of a threshold: a door to new narratives and forgotten histories. Rooted in tradition and crafted with patience, Puerta Negra transforms fashion into a vessel for reflection, connection, and transformation.

To begin simply I would like to know more about who you are and what are you doing ? 

My name is Catalina Quintana. I was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela.

After several years living and studying in Europe, I made the decision to return home. Despite the ongoing challenges in my country, I felt a strong need to create something rooted in where I come from.

That’s how Puerta Negra was born in late 2021 as a way to revisit Venezuelan craft and fashion through a new lens, one that values tradition while disrupting it.

What inspired the name Puerta Negra, and what significance does it hold for you?

The name Puerta Negra was inspired by the house I grew up in; Portón Negro, a place that has housed three generations, where my grandmother was raised, where my mother and uncles grew up, and eventually, where I spent my own childhood. It’s a house filled with stories I’ve been hearing my whole life, a place that has lived through many changes, yet somehow remains the same. While going through old family photos as part of my research, I realized how many moments were rooted in that space.

Naming the brand after it felt natural. I also liked that Puerta Negra could stand on its own symbolic and abstract. A door can represent many things: a threshold, an opportunity, a passage into another place or world. That felt aligned with what I wanted the brand to become.

Can you share the beginning of Puerta Negra, was there a particular moment or feeling that inspired you to create your own brand ?

I don’t think there was a specific moment. It was more that this entire universe already existed in my mind shaped by many years of research, images, ideas, ideologies, and desires. It felt inevitable that it needed to take form, to become its own thing. I also saw a space in the market for something more thoughtful something that approached fashion with intention. Puerta Negra became a way to explore that, using clothing as a tool to express ideas and connect with others.

You often speak about heritage, memory and encounter between past, present and future. How does your personal history unfold in the construction of a garment?

I’m always personally involved with each piece, there’s always a part of me that goes into it. Each garment carries elements of our research, our references, and personal memory, but it also becomes something on its own. The process of developing a piece is part of the narrative and is forms its own story, it reflects a timeline in itself. It begins as an idea, through experimentation and decision-making, and eventually becomes something that points to the future. So while my own story and the brand’s language are embedded in the garment, each piece also evolves and finds its own identity along the way.

Is there any memory, object, old photograph or inspiration that you always return to creatively?

My research is constantly evolving, and I believe that’s essential. Puerta Negra has a defined core, pillars and foundations that shape its imaginarium, but like anything that’s alive, it must grow and transform. There isn’t one single image or memory I always return to, but rather a constellation of symbols, stories, and sensibilities that remain present and resurface in different ways. With each collection, I’m in search of something new. I see Puerta Negra as a living organism so evolution is necessary for its survival, and every new design becomes a way to reflect, reframe, or reinterpret the past while pushing toward the future. With each collection, I find myself asking different questions.

You blend deadstock, antique, and contemporary textiles.

What excites you about the conversation between the past and the present in material form?

Mixing fabrics feels like working with time itself. Each textile carries its own story, combining antique, deadstock, and contemporary materials has become a way for me to layer different timelines into a single piece or collection, i like to think of it as a dialogue between the past and the present, sometimes hinting at the future. The contrasts between them, fragility and strength, old and new, create a tension I find really powerful.

You’re also reviving traditional sewing and construction techniques, could you tell us more about this part of your practice?

We are a design studio, and our focus is garment construction. The atelier is the foundation of the brand, where pattern making, tailoring, and production come together. Every piece is carefully developed and overseen from start to finish. Studying the anatomy of garments and traditional techniques is essential to my practice; it gives me the depth and control needed to create innovative and distinctive work.

Created by women, by hand, at a human pace,  your studio resists the logic of mass production.

What does “slowness” mean to you in the context of your creative rhythm?

Slowness, for me, is a form of respect, towards the craft, the process, and the people behind each piece. It allows ideas to evolve organically and garments to be built with intention, not urgency.

Working at a human pace lets us stay connected to every detail, from an idea, to the first sketch to final stitch. It’s not about resisting time, but about giving time meaning.

If you could list the elements that make up Puerta Negra’s universe, what would they be?

  • Structure

  • Anatomy

  • Construction

  • Craft

  • Wool

  • Cotton

  • Silk

  • Jacquards

  • Velvet

  • Memory

  • Time

  • Jazz

  • Rock

  • Books

  • Duality

  • Curiosity

  • Caracas

  • Venezuela

  • Nostalgia

  • Home

  • House

  • Heritage

  • Orchids

  • Old pictures

  • Stories

  • Poetry

  • Past

  • Present

  • Future

  • Growth

  • Possibility

  • Life & death

  • Your shadow self

  • Nature

  • Birds

  • Rain

  • Wind

  • The moon

  • The sun

  • Saturn

  • Antiques and relics

  • Homage

  • Childhood

  • Portals

  • Pain

  • Tension

  • Collision

  • Vintage buttons

  • Velvet ribbons

  • An armour

  • Women

  • Vulnerability

  • Hope

  • Coffee

  • Teamwork

  • Goya

  • Hitchcock

  • Bergman

  • Lynch

  • Louise Bourgeois

  • Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

  • Jung

  • Mystery

  • Friendship

  • Family

  • Community

  • Eye contact

  • Touch

  • Romance

  • Hand-written letters

  • René Lalique

  • Marisol

  • Pina Bausch

  • Hermann Hesse

  • Redemption

  • Forgiveness

  • Self-love

  • Discipline

All Images courtesy of Puerta Negra

www.puertanegra.com

@puertanegra

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