Site Presented By
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
The Colombian "Armani of bulletproof clothing," who makes custom evening wear for Hugo Chavez and shoots his employees to show off his products, has just opened a new office in Mexico City. His business is booming.
Sep 22, 2005 | It is hard to blame Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for believing someone is out to get him and for taking extraordinary steps to protect himself these days.
The United States government, after all, is widely believed to have supported a coup plot against him in 2002. And then there's Pat Robertson's recent Tourette's-like recommendation that the White House save us some cash and just "take out" the South American leader.
With all that love coming his way, it is no surprise Chavez routinely dons protective clothing. But for a president with an outsize ego and an eye for the ladies, style is something not even the embattled Chavez could sacrifice.
Call in Miguel Caballero, the self-described "Armani of bulletproof clothing," who produces "high-security fashion" in an unassuming shop tucked almost anonymously into a middle-class suburb of Bogotá, Colombia.
The 38-year-old Caballero is only too happy to help. He recently stitched together a wine-red guayabera for Chavez, lined with a layer of woven aramid fibers strong enough to stop a .9 mm slug. The fancy tropical shirt was just like the white one Caballero produced for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, another leader with good reason to watch his back: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia tried to assassinate him three times in 2002 alone.
Those aramid fibers -- weaves of specially treated synthetic thread -- are the new industry standard. The fibers are in vogue now that protective material like Kevlar has fallen out of favor because of its weight and performance under fire. And Caballero has emerged as a specialist in a crowded protective-gear field for his imaginative use of the lightweight materials.
But technical details and somber reflections on dangerous times in Latin America are not what has Caballero engaged. As we talk in a small conference room in his Bogotá office, a smile pulls across Caballero's face: Right now he's relishing another opportunity to shoot his lawyer.
It should be the fifth time Caballero has aimed a .38 caliber gun at his lawyer's belly and pulled the trigger. But this time the lawyer is uncooperative. He peeks into Caballero's office and, laughing, says he's late for an appointment. The boss won't get his jollies this time.
"No problem. I can find someone else to shoot today. Is there someone new here who hasn't been shot?" Caballero calls out into the hallway. An assistant scurries up the stairs to rustle up another victim.
By our standards in the United States -- where workplace shootings are criminal acts -- this is a horrific way to win points from the boss. But we're in Latin America, where labor standards are more like meek bureaucratic suggestions. Besides, runaway crime requires tough countermeasures, and this is Caballero's way of maintaining employees' confidence that the jackets, shirts and vests they make really do stop bullets. The 38-year-old Caballero has fired at all 80 of the employees of his security firm, some of them multiple times, in his company's 12-year history.
"I'm the only man I know who can say he's shot his lawyer four times and got away with it," Caballero says, calmly loading the gun for another demonstration of the strength of his antiballistic textiles. He turns to me and suggests I don one of his trademark leather jackets and face the barrel of his gun. The jackets used in his demonstrations have a 100 percent success rate. But this is no comfort. I decline the invitation. I tell Caballero that, no offense, this story is not worth taking a bullet for.
Caballero hardly needs to prove to anyone else the worth of his armored clothing. He is basking in international regard for his lines of fashionable protective clothing for executives and politicians who want to look good, yet feel confident they'll survive an armed assault. Apart from the guayabera purchase, Caballero said the feisty Venezuelan leader recently bought a fortified leather jacket for Iran's outgoing President Mohammed Hatami. It was a fitting gift, given that Chavez and the Iranian leader spent a couple of days this summer touring Venezuela, gleefully launching ideological barbs at U.S. President George W. Bush.
But Caballero is strictly business. He's publicly apolitical, willing to sell his expensive gear to just about anyone. (Off-limits are narcos: "You know who they are, so you tell them no right from the start.")
U.S. diplomats at the embassy in Bogotá have purchased more than a dozen Caballero jackets, the designer boasts. And throughout Latin America, military officers wear his armored uniforms and mine-resistant boots that miraculously displace the force of an explosion. And bomb squads employ his shrapnel-proof blankets.
The company now books over $3 million a year in sales, selling stab-proof and bulletproof T-shirts, denim and leather jackets, and other items that cost between $200 and $2,000.
