ANTONIO GONZALEZ MUNIZ ONE OF THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME IN MEN’S FASHION

By: Maritza Villarroel
Exclusivamente para Rex Fabrics
Fine Fabrics from Around the World

Through time, Fashion has been defined as a social phenomenon that generates trends and goods in mass that people adopt or stop using.  Fashion refers to traditions that frame a period or a specific place, especially those related to dressing or decorating.

During the course of fashion, there are decades that were distinguished and that gave splendor, have rendered cult to beauty and have made women a symbol of feminine beauty.

Style calls attention over ideas held and the way fashion is conceived, and in turn, they define a particular way to perceive and assume the changes that raise in this field.  Aesthetics, on the other hand, identifies the methods, symbols and codes tightly linked to the physical image that individuals use to pragmatically project those conceptions or ideas, in other words, a dressing style.

This equation which is the result of Fashion, is what has inspired great figures and geniuses in the design of garments and they have become involved in each one of the periods leaving a deep mark of their artistic talent.

Antonio González Muñiz, simply known as “Antonio” is one of those Cuban talents who has framed, through his ingenuity, the period of the 60's in the city of La Habana.

Antonio Muñiz, better known by his last name, graduated from the School of Art and Drawing at La Habana, and in 1948, he started to work at the print shop of the store “El Encanto”, in the same city where he was distinguished for his skill and imagination on doll drawings; immediately earning a promotion as designer of the junior department area.

His exclusive designs, won great excellence and reputation due to their quality, and in the height of his fame, in the 60's, when the prestigious store was taken over by Castro’s hordes, Antonio was forced to resign and emigrate.

He arrived in Miami and he lived at his friend’s house, the author Rogelia Castellón, who received him as another member of the family.

In the city of the Sun, he became a member of the working team of the Magazine “Vanidades”, of which he was a contributor of its pages since living in Cuba.

Together with some of his other co-workers at the store “El Encanto”, Pili de la Rosa, Demetrio,  Julio de la Campa, among other fellow countrymen lovers of art, he participated in the production “Añorada Cuba”, where he was in charge of the design of the wardrobe.  Thereon, Antonio became the wardrobe designer of Pro Arte Grateli, the oldest poetry company of the city, where he tailored the wardrobe of the 39 recorded episodes of the unforgettable television series “Que Pasa USA?.  He was also the wardrobe designer of “Ballet Concerto”, where he proved his ingenuity, skill and mastery on the costumes that warranted the choreography by its mobility and comfort.  These two stages of Muñiz consolidated him with categorical success and fame; and later on, for years he kept his atelier which made him even more famous because of his spectacular wedding dresses, considered a true work of art of the fashion design and that formed a part of the collections of prestigious stores like “Bergdorf Goodman”, in New York’s 5^th Avenue.

His creations were reasons for press reviews in 1992 in the New York Times newspaper that published social pages on the most prestigious fashion runways in the Skyscraper city.

Antonio Muñiz was the founder of the magazine“ Don Julio”, a publication of the Association of Former Employees of the store “El Encanto”, which subsequently, through the years, paid tribute to its editor in the Festival Cuba Nostalgia, where some of his unpublished signed drawings, photos of the scenes of Ballet Concerto, Que Pasa USA? and Pro Arte Grateli were displayed; as well as some mannequins that displayed some of his show-business wardrobes, for the enjoyment of those visiting the fair and who were able to get to know more closely the ingenuity and talent of one of the greatest designers of women’s fashion, throughout the history of fashion in our city.