This is a tribute to a very characteristic garment: the “bata”; a work coat that a very specific type of Spanish woman wears. It can be of multiple colors, printed with different patterns and decorated with ruffles and pockets. It’s a rectangular-shaped dress worn by women typically over 50 years old. This costume defines a whole social group of women and is not subject to the fashion industry seasonal changes. It is timeless, like the woman who wears it.

This woman is the matriarch of the family. The one that cooks for 30 relatives on Christmas day and whose life has been based on the care of their own. She is hard-working and very dear to all. This woman is danger of extinction as it is also the iconic garment that characterizes her. The new generation is no longer the wise matriarch of warm temper and lovely homemaker. She is disappearing, for better or worse.

The dress has been so deeply integrated in the tradition that it even exists a "widow bata”. It is black, for women in mourning.

For this documentary project I traveled to a village in deep Spain, Villarmienzo, lost in the wheat plains and practically uninhabited due to rural depopulation and exodus. I persuaded five women of around 80 to pose for me. I dressed them with classic “batas” bought at per kilo at a street market in Madrid. I also included some “batas” designed by me with funny fabrics. We went through the town. The wheat fields and empty streets are the scenography that contain these women. Only they remain.

The result is an incursion into the world of fashion, a tribute to the “bata” as an iconic garment and a nostalgic look at the end of an era (and not just a generation).

LUCIA HERRERO