"We are extending the exhibition for another year!" announced an excited voice on the other end of the phone on February 2014. This voice belonged to Hilda Trujillo, director of the Frida Kahlo Museum and The Museo Diego Rivera Anahuacalli.
Back then, this phrase mobilised at least half a dozen people in Condé Nast Mexico and Latin America. We met to analyse the best way to surgically execute the PR strategy, initially designed to support a six-month project which has already celebrated its third anniversary.
In November 2012, the exhibition Las Apariencias Engañan: los vestidos de Frida Kahlo (“Appearances are deceiving: The dresses of Frida Kahlo”) was inaugurated, a project developed by the Frida Kahlo Museum in collaboration with Vogue Mexico and Latin America, which showed, for the first time ever, clothes which belonged to the famously polemical painter and which had remained under lock and key for more than 50 years.
With a record number of visitors (over one million, including names such as Alejandro González Iñarritu, Dita Von Teese, Michael Nyman, Scott Schumann, Olivia Palermo, Jenny Shimizu, Shirley Manson and others, besides diplomats and authorities from the most important museums in the world), the exhibition will stay open until December 2016, thanks to its huge success.
"It's not every day that you can have an icon like Frida Kahlo so close to you."
From the very start of the project, all the elements surrounding it were already attractive by themselves - it's not every day that you can have an icon like Frida Kahlo so close to you. Still, there was a challenge: how to respectfully communicate Vogue's participation and maintain the good name of a brand that is recognised as a fashion visionary and an essential part of the culture of the countries where it resides?
Culture meets fashion
Frida Kahlo is a leading Mexican figure who is known around the globe. Brands and designers such as Yves Saint Laurent, Rei Kawakubo, Jean Paul Gaultier, Ricardo Tisci, Jason Wu and Costume National, among others, have even been inspired by her. Due to this status, in 2011 Vogue got the Blue House to open its doors for a fashion production for the first time.
That was the first contact between the Frida Kahlo Museum and Vogue, which was followed by an amazing coincidence: in planning the exhibition, art curator Circe Henestrosa found out that one of the complete outfits that was planned to be in the exhibition - rebozo, blouse and skirt - was the one Frida Kahlo wore when she posed for the lens of Toni Frissel in 1937, to illustrate the article Señoras de México for the American edition of Vogue magazine.
Photograph by Toni Frissell from the 1937 fashion shoot for Vogue. Image: Wikimedia//United States Library of Congress
“The exhibition was a turning point for fashion and special projects in Mexico and it was undoubtedly the result of the Museum's strategic and visionary way of thinking to join culture and fashion together. There are many anecdotes about this alliance, but the most important one was the anecdote about the picture as it allowed both parts to tell the story in the best way possible", said Kelly Talamas, editor-in-chief of Vogue Mexico and Latin America.
"Was there a secret? Certainly: permanent, respectful and specialised team work."
During the time of planning, which took nearly a year, multidisciplinary teams from both the Frida Kahlo Museum and Condé Nast often sat together at the table to develop the project. Was there a secret? Certainly: permanent, respectful and specialised team work.
The PR strategy for this project began long before the exhibition saw the light, since not only did we have to think about how to amplify the initiative in the media, but also how to speak to various audiences that needed to be reassured that we would not trivialize Frida Kahlo, even if - as it ultimately happened - she was featured on the cover or in a book that carried the five powerful letters of the Vogue brand.
What we did for public relations was to capitalize from presenting Frida Kahlo as she had never been presented before: through an exhibition that explored the relationship between her disability and the fashion she wore. We shared editorial initiatives, such as the supplements, notes and videos, with the media in order to reach a new and different audience who discovered the universe of the painter. On the other hand, the book offered a serious and thorough document which tried to explain the origins and concerns of Frida Kahlo's work and that of her partner, Diego Rivera.
¿Pies para que los quiero si tengo alas pa’ volar?
Here, I borrow Frida Kahlo's famous phrase because, from my point of view, it perfectly summarises our desire to fly with initiatives like the book Todo el universo. Frida Kahlo. El mundo México (“All the universe, Frida Kahlo, the Mexican world”) as the third and final part of the initiative. This added to the exhibition, which already allowed us to progress steadily, and the events we carried out to provide a differentiated experience and a supplement that became a story itself and traveled around the world.
What at first glance seemed totally far away, proved to be very close: Frida Kahlo has been present in the pages of Vogue for decades. Although her story, her work and her partner have been interesting for many magazines, nothing was as obvious to Vogue as her disruptive, but traditional at the same time, fashion style.
Over the past three years, we have used every little detail derived from this project to make news and communicate. We have always been aware of its impact at an international level and it has never been left aside. With this project, we hope to have contributed to show, with successful practice, that joining efforts and resources can demolish fears which unfortunately still exist when it comes to the combination of cultural projects and global brands. Yes we are different, but not so distant.
Main image: Vogue Mexico and Latin America
Vogue Mexico and Latin America is the winner of the Entertainment and Culture category at the innaugural Latin America Excellence Awards. Winners were annouced in January and will be honoured at the Winners Day in Rio de Janeiro on April 14 2016, when communications professionals come together to celebrate the best in PR over the last year. The winners day will include a Symposium and a Winners Dinner. Find out more about this event here. Follow Vogue Mexico and Latin America on Twitter at @VogueMexico and on Instagram at VogueMexico.
