The cult appeal of Ibiza’s De La Vali

 Kate Moss and Lila, Gala Gonzalez, Miranda Makaroff, Charlotte Tilbury, Clara Paget, Chloé Caillet, Jazzy de Lisser – barely a week passes in Ibiza without a star being spotted carrying De La Vali's distinctive black and gold shopper. This week it was the turn of pop icon  Rita Ora, who was posing for De La Vali-clad selfies no sooner had she hopped off the plane. So just what is it about Ibiza’s favourite homegrown label that has caught the eye of fashion’s most fabulous faces? 

‘I think because Laura and I grew up in Ibiza, our interpretation of island style is very authentic and very real’, muses Jana Sascha Haveman who, along with childhood friend Laura Castro, founded the fashion label back in 2017. ‘Nothing is forced. We are literally designing with our wild, bohemian childhoods in mind.’ Both Haveman and Castro certainly had offbeat upbringings – Haveman’s parents (her father is Dutch, her mother is German) met in the 1970s hippy haven of Cadaqués on the Costa Brava, relocating to Ibiza to raise Jana when Cadaqués was deemed ‘too remote’. Laura’s Chilean father fled the Pinochet regime and met her mother - ‘a blonde, Dutch, hippy babe’ - on the beach in Ibiza. Haveman and Castro were introduced as infants and were both raised barefoot in Ibiza’s northern campo, riding ponies, climbing trees and ‘hanging around our parents’ wild parties’. 

Today, the girls are more likely to be found on a yacht than on a pony (Haveman and Ora were snapped last week in matchy-matchy bronze bikinis on a superyacht headed to Formentera), but their style remains firmly rooted in Ibiza’s ready-to-ride, northern earthiness. Recent De La Vali collections encapsulate a whimsical mish mash of fluttering, floral naivete, DC10-ready rock’n’roll edge and straight-up Spanish sultriness – in short, a visual interpretation of the Ibiza the girls are immersed in. But it’s not just Ibiza that has fallen for Castro and Haveman’s charms – the girls stole the show at last year’s British Fashion Awards and have previously shown their collections at London Fashion Week. ‘The beauty of the brand is that there’s a subtle way of wearing the dresses,’ says Castro. ‘You can dress them up or dress them down. You can wear boots, heels, sandals – because you never know where you're gonna end up. Night or day. Beach or nightclub. City, country, coast. We’re island girls through and through but we spend half our time in London. The brand needs to translate to that market too.’ As De La Vali expands into international collaborations – a recent tie-in with Italian shoe label Ricagno saw half of London society fly in for the launch party at The Standard – and the whitewashed La Marina storefront remains Ibiza’s hottest address, all eyes are on what the De La Vali girls do next.