PHOTO BY GUILLE SOLA
I first walk by Capas Seseña at lunchtime, when, of course, it’s shuttered, like every shop on Madrid’s Calle de la Cruz. But one look at the capes in the window—one in a shiny pink brocade dotted with cougars, another in tan merino trimmed with gold soutache—and I know I’m not leaving the city without my very own. The Seseña family has been making capes since 1901, dressing Spain’s royal family, bullfighters galore, even Hillary Clinton. Picasso asked to be buried in his. In the early 1900s, you couldn’t throw a croqueta without hitting a cape maker, but now Seseña is the last of the old guard, handmaking classic velvet-lined styles for men and women but also collaborating with young Spanish designers on fresh looks (that cougar print!). This is something Marcos Seseña, the company’s fourth-generation director, takes seriously. But, he tells me, “it’s very interesting to see how new clients initially attracted by the new designs end up acquiring the classic ones.” I, for one, try on just about every style in the shop and, after multiple selfies, end up buying one of the new collaborations (with madrileño designer Ulises Mérida), which is cut from a rich mulberry merino wool originating in Béjar, Spain. Now, unsurprisingly, I also crave one of the classics, like a 1901 cape, pictured here. No matter which style you choose—because, oh, if you go, you will get one—Seseña has good advice on how to pull it off: “My father—and others before him—said that the cape cannot dominate you; you must dominate it.” Capes from $275, sesena.com
