Manuel Molina, the founder of Camisas Manolo, was first introduced to tailoring by a man named Waldo. At the time, Molina was studying at the Instituto Europeo di Design in his native Madrid, driven by his interest in Japanese design and the Antwerp Six. Waldo, meanwhile, was in his ’70s, an expert tailor and teacher. “He was old, short-tempered, but incredibly impactful,” Molina says. After their first meeting, Molina was hooked.
Waldo gave Molina some advice: “In tailoring, the older you are, the better you get.” With this phrase ringing in his ears, Molina began to accumulate as much experience as possible. He finished his degree with a thesis that looked at how each part of a shirt corresponded to different parts of the human body. “Understanding that relationship helps you see patternmaking, cutting, and assembling differently,” he says. “To be able to construct a good shirt, you need to understand anatomy. When you understand movement and proportions, everything makes sense.”
After graduating, Molina began a tour through Madrid’s storied ateliers. At one point he found himself learning from Joaquin Fernandez Pratz, a third-generation master tailor whose family had made suits for presidents and monarchs alike. The Pratz dynasty was a living embodiment of the city’s conservative sartorial legacy — the very thing that Molina would eventually push back on.
In each workshop, Molina learned a little more. Eventually, he decided to narrow his focus even further. He was intrigued by the quiet shirtmaker sitting at the end of each bench, “reading notes and drafting patterns, working almost in isolation,” he says. “I wanted that. I also began to see shirts in a historical context — always worn under jackets, blazers, and knitwear — which shaped how I thought about them.” He became interested in the ways that shirts, previously kept close to the body and hidden beneath other garments, had become more prominent. “Details like collars, cuffs and pleats were communicating hierarchy, elegance, or rebellion,” he says. “I love that duality.”
Camisas Manolo, founded in 2019, allowed Molina to build a bridge from his passion for the craft of shirtmaking to his more progressive outlook. “We combine tradition and experience on the technical side with evolution and dynamism on the visual side,” Molina says. In practice, that means putting his training into every shirt he makes, with a couple of twists. Some Camisas Manolo shirts come with a cropped and boxy cut, antithetical to the strict rules of classic tailoring. There are knit linen shirts, open collars, double sleeves, and other casual details incorporated into each design.
It’s important for Molina to push at expectations for how his shirts are presented. “If you do a blue-and-white-striped shirt and take a picture with no one wearing it, it’s going to look like any other blue-and-white-striped shirt,” he says. It’d be easy for Camisas Manolo to show shirts in classic lookbooks, worn under blazers or with a tie. Instead, Molina often partners with artists to display his collections. In the past, shirts have been transformed into mosaics and paintings — by Ruaidhri Ryan and Sebastian Fabrowicz, respectively — while lookbooks have featured multiple shirts layered on top of one another, hidden within dry cleaning bags, or printed onto black-and-white paper. “It’s very important that we show our shirts in a different way,” Molina says, “so people can understand that we’re doing something different.”
Camisas Manolo also breaks with the classical approach in terms of its influences, looking to everyday objects and surroundings, people, and nature. Molina’s reference points can be seen in the ways he gently pushes the boundaries of traditional shirtmaking: the cropped cuts, smoky mother-of-pearl finishes, and details drawn from his own experience. He gives his double sleeve shirts as an example, a nod to his time spent skateboarding and the look of a long sleeve layered under a tee. “I like combining traditional tailoring details with the volumes and shapes from different subcultures,” he says.
The combination of tradition and modernity extends into other parts of the Camisas Manolo business. They still offer made-to-measure, for instance. “Everything is cut by hand, so that’s the tradition,” Molina says. “Made-to-measure and bespoke bring something different than selling shirts online to people that I don’t see or meet. You see the customer, you listen to the customer, you can tell the customer what’s best for the occasion. I really enjoy that. It’s like designing a collection but just through one shirt.”
That balance — between tradition and progressive design — lets Camisas Manolo dip its toes into lots of different worlds. For instance, the brand worked on a collection with Madrid Camiseros, “one of the oldest workshops in Madrid,” Molina points out, as well as a capsule collection with Paloma Wool. These and other collaborations, such as a capsule with London womenswear label Hai earlier this year, have let Molina flex both sides of Camisas Manolo.
Molina’s vision has clearly found an audience. His brand is currently sold at stockists ranging from Isetan in Tokyo and Mohawk General Store in Los Angeles to Bassal in Molina’s home country and Solar MTP across the border in France. The next stage for the brand’s growth is to extend its made-to-measure program, with trunk shows scheduled across the world.
Still, Molina is keen to resist too much expansion, focusing on deepening his relationships with stockists rather than seeking new ones. “Three years ago, I would’ve said I want to sell everywhere,” he says. “But now I want to focus on just a few stores. If you want to keep delivering quality, there is a point where you lose control. When you go to big stores, you never know if the person selling the shirt is selling the same thing you’re trying to communicate. I’d rather have fewer stores selling and keep the idea.”
It makes sense that Molina wants to keep things focused; that’s the way he’s built Camisas Manolo for the past six years. This approach has allowed his different, and sometimes contrasting, influences to sit side by side. From his training at Madrid’s tailoring houses to the more progressive eye he’s always had; from made-to-measure shirtmaking to collaborations with forward-looking womenswear labels and storied workshops alike. “For me, versatility is the key,” Molina says. “It makes the possibilities endless.”
