It is around 1990-91…All seemed well, the shop was in place, orders from great stores from all over the world were coming in, it could not be better, so what could happen?
Well, anything could happen and did happen and like they say when it rains it pours!
It started with the new shop in the Mall which was now officially opened and got a lot of publicity in the papers and TV, and in the beginning a lot of people were coming but after about a year the Mall became a very quiet place and it often looked completely empty. Because of that, many shops were closing which made it even worse and on top the clients were complaining how difficult it was to get there. To park a car was too far away and the Taxis, which is a favorite means of transport in Madrid, could not stop right in front of the building so the people had to walk a small distance but when it rained or snowed the short distance became a long distance. Our clients, of which many were celebrities, were used to stop right in front of the shop and hop in, that was very private and agreeable and they liked it that way. In the Mall they had to go on the rolling stairs and walk quiet a bit in public before reaching our shop and most of them did not like that. The whole deal of the Mall was not that good as it had seemed at first, the rent, which went by the meters (or feet) you occupied, was very high as our shop was pretty big, a quarter of the size would have been sufficient but my mind saw it big with many more things I wanted to design and sell. So even that we ourselves had made the shop out of nothing, we had to pay a rent and the bills of electricity were high, the bills and the interest for the loan of the bank to make the shop were sometimes impossible to pay. It was a hard time and on top of everything the shop in Piamonte had to go because they were indeed going to tear down the building.

There were also very good moments though, very nice people came to the shop, among them Sharon Stone who was filming in Madrid, Gabriel Carcia Marquez with his wife and Pedro Almodovar always had our shoes in his films and so on; but the bills were suffocating us and then… more bad news were soon to be coming our way…

In the meantime the latest collection was in the stores and a new collection was ready to go into production….

wish I had all these now

… or these..

or any of these…

My very favorite

Rocky, the best seller, there were 7 different Rockies and this is Rocky 7

The hairy shoe

In Madrid, wearing my booties and everything else made by me. Alejandro made this picture.

idea for the shop window Puerta de Toledo.

designing shoes

designing clothes

and making pictures of my fav models Alegria and Ava, here in Paris.

and so things were going and moving and changing…

LOVE and PEACE

We are somewhere in the late 80-ties and all is going really well and now that I was adopted by that big factory I had more time to draw and design.

One day Taria showed me a paper that had come in the shop’s mail that was talking about a big project that was on the way to make a super modern Mall specialized in Fashion and Antiques. It was the first Mall in Madrid, or Spain even, in the old town near Puerta de Toledo and the papers were all talking about it. When we read more about it and saw that many of the Spanish Fashion designers had signed up, it started to look tempting to us because you actually had to build the store yourself, there was only the space like a big hole in the ground in a skeleton of a Mall that still had to be build. They were working on it day and night because it had to be finished at a certain time. WOW, now that was a challenge! building your shop from scratch in a record time.
What was I thinking? I felt so good and all seemed to be going so well that I thought I could pull this off- of course counting on the help of my husband Salvador.

For me this was meant to be because my relationship with Taria was a bit deteriorating as we had different opinions and taste so I never could do what I really wanted. Besides,  the building that our shop was in was going to be torn down anytime and so we seriously started to think about it and designing the shop on paper which later had to be checked by a legal architect to make sure it was OK. If the commission agreed you were allowed to start building and they did agree. First thing was to sell my half of the shop in Piamonte to Taria, who sold it to a friend and they would go on doing the shop and be our client.
OK  yes, now we had to start building, a floor, a ceiling and walls as well as put electricity and water. Good for us we had a friend in Algeciras, Emilio, who was a handy man and knew all and everything about building, electricity and water and everything else, he was amazing and agreed to come to Madrid and help us. Salvador and Emilio worked for weeks or months from early morning till night, dusty and sweaty….  what a work it was in the hot summer of Madrid… When I could I also helped but I was also doing the shoes,

the factory, the family and when I think back I can hardly believe we did all that, it was so much work and obviously it was costing a lot of money too. It was going to be quiet a big shop and I should have been more humble and take a smaller one and do things very simple.. but I was going and was going too fast… there was no way of stopping me….

So finally… our shop in Puerta de Toledo

They also photograped our shop for a book called : “100 great looking shops”.

In the meantime Alegria went to school in Madrid but here she is visiting Ava in Paris where I took this picture of this 2 super models. Alegria wears my jacket ( see picture above this one) and Ava wears a dress her mother, Cooky Debidour, made for her. Alejandro was now completely in charge of the new shop doing a great job.

                                           LOVE AND PEACE