The classic Madrid chulapa dress is living a silent revolution. Stripes of all kinds, impossible geometries, fractals, bears or stars. In 2025 any print is valid to dance a chotis or eat some donuts in the San Isidro meadow. The key is to show off this regional suit that retains the castiza essence of the capital, but dares to reinterpret it with aesthetic winks that bring it closer to both contemporary fashion and the diverse identities of those who carry it.
Arancha Rodrigálvarez, dressmaker and founder of the Fashion Study Carmen17 specialized in the preparation of chulapa dresses, puts a delicacy in a mannequin in a mannequin model. “Look, the fabric has snails,” he says with a laugh. For almost a decade, this fashion workshop that runs along with his partner Sofia Nieto in the heart of Madrid, proposes a stylized version of the traditional suit: two more versatile pieces, sleeves that remind of lantern instead of the bulky ham, and fringes in the back as a wink to the Manila shawl. “We have noticed an increase in orders. This year we have received 40 orders,” adds the seamstress, which justifies that these orders are not concentrated only in spring: “We are making chulapa costumes all year round. There are people who marry dressed in cooling.”
Each piece is done completely personalized, with a process that can last between fifteen days and one month, and that requires at least three face -to -face to take action, adjust the design and collect the finished garment. The average price is around 500 euros.
For the first time, Nerea Fernández, 31, has made a chulapa dress. He confesses that she is the first of her group of friends who is encouraged to do so. It is a set composed of a shirt, as topand a skirt with a colorful floral print, but which retains the folk cutting. “I had always wanted to make me a chulapa suit, but the traditional did not convince me enough to invest so much money,” explains this Madrid. Nerea says that last year she saw that type of dress that was common and was burned on social networks. “Not only is it used to go to San Isidro, it’s so beautiful that I can use it for another time. For example, the top can combine it with jeans.”
Chulapas and ‘Tiktokers’
The young woman influencer 25 years eme of love popularized this concept among its generation at the Madrid parties of 2024. The Tiktoker A chulapa dress that did not go unnoticed as a fabric that had a pink bear print. His videos touring the San Isidro festivities with this suit set viral. This year was not going to be less and has repeated. He has taken, again in Rodrigálvarez’s study, a chulapa dress of a red cloth with stamped white stars, which emulates the flag of the Community of Madrid. Although she is from Seville, in her publications she recognizes that “Madrid is the city that welcomes everyone, wherever you are.”
“It is striking that there are many people who are not from Madrid and the chulapa suit is made, because their partner is Madrid, because they work here or simply, because they like it,” Rodrigálvarez suggests, which indicates that “there is an increase in the participation of the party because there is a sector that tries to dignify it and make it accessible to all.”
This renewed enthusiasm for the San Isidro festivities is not only perceived in sewing houses, but also in the squares. “Madrid is in fashion, we have been noticing a brutal rebound for two or three years, especially among young people,” explains Ana Paz Medina, president of the Los Chulapos Madrid Association of the Vallecas bridge. Each Wednesday rehearses chotis and other castizos dances, and many participants share their choreographies on platforms such as Tiktok, proud of a Madrid identity that until recently seemed blurred. “There is a generation that is appropriating the suit, yes, but with respect.” Because in this reinterpretation there is no breakup, but a clear will to continue, to bring the traditional to the present without losing its root.
A dress that is “a cultural construction”
For historian Ana Velasco, author of Spanish fashion 1898-1936. Whales, apaches and cocaine in flower (Catarata, 2025), the current boom in the Chulapa suit is not accidental or merely aesthetic. “It is not a historical dress in itself, it is a cultural construction,” he says. Although its origin dates back to the 18th century, when an interest in reaffirming Spanish identity against foreign influences, it was in the nineteenth century and, above all, through the zarzuela, when it was consolidated as a traditional symbol. “Already in the twentieth century, fashion is linked to consumption and thereby resurfaces interest in regional suit as an element of belonging,” says Velasco. Today we attend, according to this expert, a “neocasticism” driven by a need for roots in uncertain times. “It is a local response to the global vertigo,” he says, citing phenomena such as the Pop Madridism of C. Tangana.
And although this rebirth has an identity dimension, it also responds to a logic of the boom From social networks: “Dressing from chulapa looks good on Instagram,” says Velasco. It only remains that the ‘low cost’ clothing chains take out their version.
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