La Libertad was born as a brand in 2009, a product of the imagination and initiative of Federico Castrillón, an advertising graduate from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in 2002. After practicing his profession in advertising agencies as a graphic creative and later as a freelancer, he decided to look for a side to explore with illustration, finding in jewelry and textile printing a language to tell stories without the restrictions imposed by the corporate world, hence the name of the brand, La Libertad.
Its themes play with natural sciences to allude to human psychological instances where, based on animal taxonomies and their meaning throughout history, behaviors and imaginaries constructed by mythology, history and universal literature are explored.
Each collection is like opening the page of an encyclopedia, an exercise that Federico remembers practicing as a child, voraciously devouring information on those images that sparked his interest in those compendiums of human knowledge: the imposing burrowing birds of his native Colombia, the funerary mask of Tutankhamun, the disturbing characters of Hieronymus Hieronymus, the tragedies of Shakespeare or the chilling stories of Edgar Allan Poe. To an unsuspecting viewer they might seem like random selections, however, there is a factor why they aroused that fascination in the creator's childhood: mystery.
Ornament plays a fundamental role in the brand´s aesthetics, collecting graphic information from ancient civilizations such Egypt and Greece, passing through medieval illuminations and baroque acanthus leaves, reaching modern decorative arts styles such as art nouveau and art deco.
La Libertad aims to return to the ritual of using jewelry as an element that, beyond being a decorative accessory for clothing, becomes an amulet for the user who wears it, with a meaning and a story.
