The Empty District

Knowledge is there and if you want to discover it you will. Yet Guiseppe credits his understanding to his magic practices and alien dream downloads, which he attest to helping him come up with the architecture of SEUM, the multi-brand concept store that he designed. 

Magic is a power that most of us won't be able to understand but whether you believe in magic or not the transformative power of clothes can’t be denied. Guiseppe takes that power further by harnessing magic to create spells that protect him, his team and his customers that take a piece with them.

Everything about Ayanegui is pure connection and vibration.

ARLENY – Tell me a little bit about the brand, it's been 10 years now. What inspired you to start it? 

GUISEPPE – Fashion in Mexico was completely different. Right now there's a huge atmosphere, you can find local designers and many many options. In the past, there used to be only a few designers, it was a completely different industry. We need to have some Mexican designers with a proposal, with everything. I was also studying magic and that showed me that I wanted to make something material with what I had in mind and bring it to life, and kind of program people through the clothing so their lives can be easier or better.

When you say, ‘studying magic’, is that something you did in school or on your own time?

No, I did it. I quit school.

You quit high school? 

Yeah for me it was like, why am I studying if no one is going to teach me what I want to do. And in here they're just teaching me how to be a machine, how to work for someone else. And for me it was like, okay, what do you want? And if this is what I want, I want to do it by myself. No one else is gonna teach me and I didn’t have the resources or the money to have the career that I want. So it was like, how am I gonna get to the same point without any money or budget? 

So while I was studying, I made that decision to quit high school and that’s when I met my best friend and he was like, “Hey dude, we should go to this magic school. I just met a girl, they’re going to give us some tests and those tests will show if you are able to get in or not.” 

What were the tests? 

It was numerology and certain questions to know if you would use those things for the good or for the bad.

How long did you do the magic school for?

I did it for three years and it's crazy because when we started the teacher told us, “You are going to be here for three years and then it is going to end.”

Almost like they saw into the future. Because it's not three years for everyone?

Yeah. No, people actually, they just stop going. It's crazy because when you start learning magic life tests you a lot. 

Because you're dealing with spirits at the end of the day, right?

Yeah, you can start seeing the true substance of other people. You know, you start understanding the world. And in this school they taught us, from 13 different cultures. Which were Mayan, Jewish, they also have different currents, like Anunnaki, like a lot of ancient Hindu, many, many of them.

Magic is something that has been practiced in Mexico for a long time. When you first told me that you were practicing magic, I assumed it got passed down from a family member, but it didn't, you chose to look for it.

Yeah, they never taught me anything, but at the same time they've always been super open. My grandmother introduced me to meditation, she taught me a lot of things about spirituality and to find yourself. And the same with my mom. She's always pushing me to be a person who finds themselves not in a religion, more in yourself.

It was more spiritual.

Exactly. My father is a bus driver, like a touristic bus driver. And they were like, okay, we're gonna go to different states of Mexico. So you will know all your culture. And we had a lot of stories. Like we stayed for a month in the middle of the jungle with the Lacandones and they are kind of magicians of the jungle. They don't believe in time. They don't even know their ages. They don't need names. And we were there in the middle staying with no technology for a month. They were going to hunt and or just collect mushrooms. They started to teach me about their own practices. I was like, this is incredible.

How old were you?

I was like 12. And the other trip was with the Raramuri, another indigenous culture that we have in the north of the country. They don't use sneakers, they're just running through the mountains. So we stayed with them, they taught us their culture and practices. My parents always said don't take a look at other cultures outside of your country. First you need to know about your own country. And what they believe, but not in the American perspective. You need to experience more the roots. I can say I know almost all of Mexico.

That's so cool. From a very young age you've been exposed to different ways of thinking. Do you think that really influenced where you are now?

I think that changed my whole perspective about the world, about humanity, about, you know, our conscious. And it started to help me develop my mind to know what we are as humans and how we are dealing with things. I think when I started to do fashion, I started with, okay, what is fashion? It's something that could be superficial, but at the same time, it could be something to express ourselves and to help ourselves. We just have to have more options. And of course, for me coming from nothing, it's something that I have to build. It's something that's gonna take time. And it’s something that I need to make happen. It's like, I need to do it. I need to do campaigns, I need to show up. I need to do all these things so I can get to this next step.

It's deeper than the materialistic aspect and the superficial aspect, but is there one message that you're really trying to get across with the brand?

Yeah. Right now I know that I want to inspire the people. Something that people don’t know about me is that I come from nothing. Literally sleeping on bricks because that's how my room was. No floor, no paint, no finishings, no anything, just bricks and my bed. And for me, something that I want to do is inspire people. I think inspiration is important in Mexico to be like, okay, if he did this, you know, I can do it. But at the same time, I wanna show to the people a really good concept. And when I build the collections everything has a context. Every collection is inspired by a tarot card. So I'm building a character. And with that character, I'm telling you a story. It's something that is gonna teach you through your unconscious. You know, like every outfit, every look, it's a message for your subconscious. 

How do you choose which tarot card? 

So I'm creating my own deck.

So you're picking the collection based on the deck you're creating. Has anybody from your team seen the full deck or just you?

Nobody. Just me. So that's the way I'm choosing, you know, going one by one.

What is the card that you chose for this collection that we just shot? 

The Empress. It's a very feminine card, it represents creative imagination, so it's about bringing mental energy down to Earth. That's why many of the pieces are like bringing them back, like a rapture, as if you were shedding your skin, but at the same time it's very grounded. That's why I chose motocross, because it's something that uses the earth and something you have to materialize, and that's where the connection lies. 

When I do my campaigns, I'm also trying to mix different things. You know, like when I had this campaign, with a motorcycle I was trying to make a ‘Satira’ from the nineties. In the nineties it used to be a blonde girl with a blonde guy, and the women naked, like super sexualized but at the same time, a little bit misogynistic. For me, we are 10 years after, I want to change that. I want to have a Black plus size girl in the front of the motorcycle and in the back, a naked model, who's Latino. And, you know, to try to mix it and change it and be like, okay, what we saw in the past as misogyny, now we can see it, or we can use it in our favor. This is gonna be my freedom. You know, like I can use it for myself, not for a man. This is a way I can have control, how to express myself, how to feel sexy, and how to just be. And I’m showing that in an image.

This idea of the Black plus size model and the naked Spanish model in the back, I feel like in the latin culture it is something that is difficult to do. Latin culture is still a little outdated, like male, female and their roles and Mexico has surprised me in that I feel like it's very progressive. Like I see the way people dress. The men dress in like their tiny tank tops, and it's very open, which I'm used to in New York, and it's great, but in a Latin country it kind of surprises me.

Mexico, it's a beautiful country, but at the same time, it's still super misogynist and ‘machista’ and it's very maternal at the same time. When you grow up, you are gonna grow up with five moms. It's gonna be your auntie, it's gonna be your grandma, it’s gonna be your mom, it's gonna be your sister. All those are gonna be your mommies. 

It’s so sad when you grow up with that and a lot of violence towards women. When you grow up as a gay man, it's like, we need to express. And I'm not talking only about myself, I'm talking about many people that we need to live in a revolution with our own society. 

And I think that's why Mexico, right now, it's so progressive. Because it's like, I already lived this, you know, I've been living all this shit. I wanna make it change. I can do it through my clothes and I can do it through what I'm doing. One of the first campaigns that I did, it was like two girls kissing, a trans girl and a Black woman. And I put that in the whole city, and the reaction of the people was crazy.

Your mom was at the shoot cooking for everyone and you mention grandmas and aunts and you have all these mother figures. And magic itself is very feminine. When you're creating, are you channeling more of a feminine energy as well?

You know what's crazy, once I was like, what if I'm a trans woman? This happened in 2017. I was a twink. I was like super skinny. I was a teenager. It was because I started to understand myself more. And you know, we always have a voice in our minds, and I discovered that the voice in my head was a woman. And that's why at a certain point, I was like, maybe I'm a woman. And then I started to understand. And I was like, no, I'm not a trans woman but I know, I recognize and I accept that my inner voice is female.

And that's very important because when I start to do magic, that inner voice, it feels like it has more experience about magic and intuition and more knowledge about life. I even know the age of this woman that's in my head.

What’s her age?

It's like 56.

Oh, so she's wise. She’s lived a couple lives. 

Yeah. And definitely she's a witch, you know?

Yeah. They do say most women are either witches or healers.

Yeah. And well, that's when everything started to change because I started to be like, okay, this is a way I can use feminine energy or masculine energy, how to get energy or take out energy and how to make spells, how to open portals, how to do everything.

What portals have you opened?

When I started my first portal, it was crazy. It was in 2012. We were in the magic school and we needed to do something, you know, because it was the beginning of a new age.

What do you mean, ‘The beginning of a new age’?

So we changed our ages, our spiritual ages. And that was a very specific moment for humanity.

That was the year that everybody thought the world was gonna end. Right?

But it wasn't. It was a change of an era. It was a spiritual thing. And even in the Mayan calendar, it was written, you know, December, 2012, something’s gonna happen. And that's why we organized a ritual. But we did it with like a hundred people. And we came to a pyramid. 

That's a lot of energy at once.

Yeah. We came from different parts of the world. It was a congress of ancient magic. And we all went to a camp close to Veracruz. We started to say certain words with certain vibrations, because when they taught us numerology, they taught us how to weigh the words. So every word has a weight, and you can choose specific words or specific sounds so you can make a vibration and can change everything. We did words with a certain weight so we can open a portal; imagine 300 people repeating the same phrase. And when we started to do the rituals to open the portals, crazy things happened. Like, there was a heart in the sky made of clouds. We have photos. And when we started to make everything, there was a volcano made of fog. And we were in the middle. Like seriously crazy things. I wasn't doing drugs or anything, I swear. 

What did this portal open?

So we opened a portal to make the world transcend to a better vibration because we were vibrating in a lower dimension. So when you vibrate faster, your consciousness is also higher. So we opened a portal to make people more conscious and to wake up. But at the same time, our teacher told us that it was gonna be like 40 years of darkness. You can see it, right. 

I was just about to ask where it is? Because the world is not in a good spot. All over the world, there's so much darkness.

He told us, the darkest shadows are gonna give their last punches. You know, like the darkest shit is gonna happen now. It's gonna show up so that people can be more conscious. And I think right now there's many things that are making people wake up and being like, what is right? What is wrong? And who are we putting in power?

Because of this portal, there's gonna be 40 years of darkness, and yet you chose to start Ayanegui. Why create?

You know, what's crazy is that after everything, I started to dig more in myself and be like, who I am, where do I come from, why are all these things happening to me, or why do I have all this knowledge? I understand that a lot of my power comes from darkness, but at the same time, I understand that darkness doesn't mean that it's something evil or bad. You know? If you are in the dark, it doesn't mean that you are evil. It's like when you are magnetic or electric. If you're magnetic, you're gonna attract. If you're electric, you're gonna give. So the same with energy. That doesn't mean that the dark energies are bad or evil or are gonna cause damage. They're just gonna be a part of the world. It's like if there's no dark, there's no light. That's the balance. The thing here is that it's completely different from evil. 

This magic that you use and the spells that you practice, do you think that's what made the brand successful?

No, because I never did like material spells for my brand. You know, like I do connections. That is different. 

So it's more about connecting the energy and the puzzle pieces.

Yeah. And it's not like, I want a million pesos, I'm gonna get a million pesos. No, it's more like, I'm gonna do the spell. I'm gonna make the connection, and I will need to make it work with my material body.

Do you channel your friends' energy too? From knowing your team this last week, you guys are all very close.

Yeah. I always care about people that care about me. Something that I do usually in my spells is protect them from bad things. When I download energy for myself, I also download energy for the people who are around me. And I ask for the best things for them. It's not only everything for myself. It's very important that everybody's safe, you know? To not damage anybody. There's a phrase of a Mexican president, Benito Juarez that I love that is “El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz [Respect for the right of others is peace].” 

It's literally other people's respect.

Now that I opened SEUM, I wanted to bring more brands. When I started, a lot of people rejected me because I was coming from the ghetto. And they were like, oh no, this is too street. Like we want white classy things. Now that I have the power to do it, I opened a place to empower all my friends that come from Tepito, they come from even Iztapalapa, all these hoods that are not privileged. 

I wanted to make it grow with my employees. I inspire them to have their own brands. Like almost everybody in my team has their own brand and I sell it here.

You're giving your power back.

That’s how it grows better.