RUNNING CULTURE WITH MONSE CASTERA

In 2014, when VICE acquired i-D and expanded globally, Monse Castera was placed at the helm of the Latin American edition’s masthead. “I was really young,” she recalls, but her access to Mexico City’s alternative fashion and music scenes made her a natural fit. During the fast and loose times of 2010s media, Castera bypassed costly photoshoots, instead documenting style by “going out into the street, going to parties, seeing what other young people were doing.” As that era of media began declining as quickly as it had risen, Castera invested all her energy into her pop-up series, Momoroom, which brought together local designers to sell their work in a variety of spaces. She sees herself as an early adopter and incubator for brands and artists. i-D Kitchen was an initiative that staged runway shows for independent designers, a precursor to the project Fashion Actions (Acciones de Moda), Momoroom’s way of presenting new collections. Over the years, she has worked with Mexican brands like Sánchez-Kane, Barragán, and Sentimiento, all of which employ elements of sculpture and performance art in their clothing. Ever the multi-hyphenate, Castera’s Momoroom also ran a gallery for three years. As the artists and designers she’d worked with became more established in brick-and-mortar locales and multinational galleries, she found the pop-up model redundant. Momoroom is now what Castera calls “a cultural production agency,” with multiple employees and an IRL office. She’s also a partner in one of the newer artist-run spaces in the city, Luzy, which hosts events including video art screenings, punk shows, and zine fairs. “I enjoy having one foot in the underground and the other in the mainstream.”