It’s almost time for class to go back into session with the reboot of the Rebelde TV series, and the cast is already showing off their spiffy school clothes.
On the Netflix Latinoamérica Instagram page, a photo of the cast was posted with the students dressed in their new Elite Way School uniforms, which were created by the show’s costume designer Nayeli de Alba, a renowned Mexican stylist for the stars. Rebelde follows a group of private boarding school students who form a band in Mexico City. In real life, the band performed on stage as RBD in the mid-aughts to great international success.
“Have you seen the new Rebelde uniform?” the social media post asks fans. “I already want mine.” The uniforms are red, white, and navy blue, and consist of suit jackets, white collared shirts, sweaters, khakis, track pants, skirts, and neckties.
In a statement to Remezcla, De Alba, who has worked with major stars like Bad Bunny and Yalitzia Aparicio, talked about the importance of featuring Mexican brands in the reboot. “To me, it was very important to give visibility to Mexican fashion so that at some point, everyone knew where to find [the pieces] and we could export all that talent — which to me is the coolest thing,” she says. Under her creative vision, the uniforms seen in the teaser included shirts, pants, and skirts produced by The Pack the Spanish brand based in Mexico AYCH.
De Alba also notes that we can expect more Mexican brands in the show’s overall styling. “A lot of emerging brands, very, very small,” she says. Among the brands she mentions: Paloma Lira, Roberto Sanchez, Sanchez Kane, Georgina Treviño, Blobb, and even her own brand NDA.
In a conversation with Elle México, de Alba spoke about her inspiration behind the clothes. She said she looked at several references for the design including the 1995 comedy Clueless, Japanese school uniforms, and the house music explosion of the late 1990s, among other influences.
“Everything comes from a proposal of the spirit of the character and then the visual proposal,” de Alba told Elle México. “As we worked more on the project, the actors… gave me the fluidity to decide where I was going. I really enjoyed talking to them about their characters. Those answers greatly enriched my proposal in creativity. Listening to the actors about their characters is one of the most important things we have to do as stylists.”
De Alba said that she didn’t worry about what the last reiteration of Rebelde looked like. That series ran for three seasons, from 2004-2006. The new show is something different, featuring Gen Z characters who were not in the original.
“At the end of the day, what I focused on is that the ‘new’ Rebelde is new,” she said. “It doesn’t pretend to be a thing of the past. This new Rebelde comes to invite the fans of the past to be fans of the present and to take expression and freedom as the standard of this generation.”
Netflix Latinoamérica promises more surprises from the show will be revealed on September 25. The new Rebelde is set to premiere on Netflix sometime next year.