Can Someone Mail a Copy of Nuevo New York to Donald Trump? Inline
Photo: Hans Neumann1/5Teresita Fernandez
“My parents came to the U.S. as teenagers, in 1959, immediately after the Cuban Revolution. I’m a first-generation Cuban-American, born in Miami. I grew up in a Cuban immigrant community, with Spanish-speaking parents, so it’s an important part of my history. My parent were not involved in the arts at all, but all of the women in my family were trained in Cuba as haute couture seamstresses, so even though they were not involved in the arts per se, I was surrounded by women making things, and there was a very high level of production around me.”
Photo: Hans Neumann2/5Lazaro Hernandez
“My parents were from Camaguey, Cuba, where they were revolutionaries against Fidel Castro. They came to America with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and they made a life for themselves. When I was 19, I started to get into fashion. I applied to Parsons School of Design without telling anymore. When I was accepted, I didn’t say I was going to fashion school—I said I was going to art school. My parents said, ‘Art school? Do you want to be an artist?’ I responded, ‘Maybe an architect?’ Being an architect seemed a little better, somehow more masculine. I dropped the fashion bomb a few years later.”
Photo: Hans Neumann3/5Carolina Herrera
“The energy that you get when you arrive in New York is like plugging yourself into an electrical outlet. When you live your life here, you have to live in a different way. What I like is that you can be very public and seen by a lot of people or you can be on your own.”
Photo: Hans Neumann4/5Orlando Pita
“I don’t remember my life in Cuba, but I remember my first years in America, my school, and the apartment we lived in. It was a one-bedroom apartment, and it was my two brothers, my mother, my father, my great-grandmother, and I. They were always watching old movies on TV, and I think cinema and art from the past helped shape my appreciation of what I thought was beautiful. And my Cuban heritage: You have to dress to go out, get dressed to go to school. In America people weren’t like that. I think for my parents it must have been a culture shock.”
Photo: Hans Neumann5/5Paloma Herrera
“I was 15 when I first came to New York, and I didn’t speak any English at all. But I was lucky because in the dance world you don’t have to speak any language; you express yourself with the body. I auditioned for the American Ballet Theater and I got chosen. That was one of those moments in your life when everything changes.”
