Born in 1975, his parents are from Andalusia, Southern Spain and moved to Brussels in the ‘60s, where Ona Selfa studied fashion at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Visuels de la Cambre, graduating in 1999 with a Masters of the highest distinction.
After graduation, he worked with Oliver Theyskens, and launched his own label "JE Ona Selfa" in Feb 2000 to international acclaim, where he took charge of the artistic direction as well as designing. The collection featured directional and revolutionary knitwear that was very much a product of Ona Selfa’s mixed heritage, the fusion of passionate Latin energy and brooding Belgian romance.
His collections are distributed in leading stores such as Maria Luisa in Paris, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, among others.
Despite his relatively short career history, he was hired as the Loewe’s new designer. Like Helmut Newton bullfighting infantas, girls stormed out at Ona Selfa’s first Loewe collection for Autumn-Winter 2002 in his mix of bourgeoisie luxury and high voltage sexual energy crafted in the house fabric: Nappa leather. Ona Selfa also continues to show his own collection in Paris.
Jose Enrique Ona Selfa has an aesthetic fetish for sado-masochistic strictness. His muse is the nun, the Latin widow, the horse rider, the Latino dancer.