about the designer:

For Dania, founder and creative director of Éclatelier, fashion is more than fabric, it’s memory, inheritance, and self-expression. It’s the language she learned before she had words.

 

She was born in Chalatenango, El Salvador, where her earliest memories were not just of toys or games, but of fabrics, threads, and the hum of her mother’s design studio. Surrounded by creativity and craftsmanship during those formative years, she unknowingly stepped into the current of a family legacy that ran deep through both her maternal and paternal bloodlines.

 

That same year, her great-grandmother returned from a trip abroad with a high-fashion magazine. The images inside, striking editorials, artful silhouettes, unfamiliar names like Chanel and Dior, opened a portal to a different world. She was captivated by the raw beauty, emotion, and avant-garde energy of the editorial spreads, a universe of fashion far beyond anything she had seen before. Dania didn’t fully understand what she was seeing, but she felt it deeply: this was fashion as emotion, as power, as art. That moment sparked something that would never leave her, a quiet knowing deep within. Her soul recognized something ancient and true: this was her calling.

 

When her mother left the country that same year, Dania was raised by her paternal grandparents, two individuals whose lifestyle became a living masterclass in custom-made elegance, a world where clothing was made, not bought. Her grandfather had his trousers made for him by local tailors, often his shirts too. He dressed with quiet precision. Her grandmother had matching sets made for her, combinations crafted from cottons, silks, or linens she’d often handpick from local fabric shops. 

When the tailor didn’t bring samples, they went to choose the materials themselves. Even off-the-rack pieces were routinely altered for a perfect fit. That was simply how things were done. Shopping was never about brand names, it was about textiles, textures, and the ritual of making something personal.

 

Dania grew up immersed in this rhythm. By the time she was around 10 years old, she had made her first skirt. Her grandmother taught her how to care for the family’s sewing machine, and together they navigated the basics of garment construction, not as a hobby, but as a quiet tradition passed down. Whether it was her school uniforms or clothes for special events like pageants or performances, nearly everything she wore in those years was custom made. Even shopping days meant visiting fabric stores instead of retail malls.

 

In her early teens, she followed this inherited path, dreaming up clothing designs with her childhood best friend, picking out the fabrics, and bringing their sketches to local tailors who would bring them to life. This wasn’t fashion as fantasy, this was fashion as a way of existing, of expressing, of connecting.

 

In her world, custom clothing wasn’t a luxury, it was a way of life.

 

When she moved to the United States at 15 to live with her mother, her creative voice didn’t dim, it just took time to evolve. She initially pursued graphic design, then marketing, but the pull toward fashion never went away. Eventually, she switched majors to study fashion design, finally giving herself permission to go after what she had always known was hers to do.

 

In 2024, after years of personal transformation, spiritual growth, and artistic refinement, she made the decision to begin her own fashion house. One rooted not only in beauty, but in meaning.

 

Éclatelier is the realization of that dream, where threads of lineage, devotion, and soul are woven into garments that speak. For Dania, design is not a trend to follow but a truth to unveil. Each piece is more than fabric; it is a portal into memory, a vessel of resilience, a quiet rebellion against the forgettable. It is the art of becoming, timeless, intimate, and deeply rooted in the hands that shaped her.