INTO SHOES, SHOES, SHOES

Posted on December 2, 2011 by willyvanrooy

That was it! Francisco had found us a small Factory that was for rent! Wow, Our own factory! It was very old but everything was there, some incredible machines that looked really alien and too old to use but everything we needed for our handmade shoes worked. It was amazing because the rent was not much and it was perfect for us.

Well, here we were again cleaning up as good as possible and painted the office blue-green so one had the feeling to be in the water.… Through the window from the entrance to the office

It was quiet a setup, we had to get people to make the shoes for us, a pattern maker, cutters, seamstresses, the shoe makers, (each specialized in his thing and machine to keep the chain going) a girl to finish the shoes, 2 or 3 young assistants, someone for the office and someone to drive around and organize and pick up things (Francisco) and a manager to keep an eye on everything. Then there was us, Salvador the M.A.D. director and me the M.A.D. designer

and Mariani, who had come from Holland with a friend for a visit and stayed, she was my right hand so to speak. We had placed an add in the paper and had job interviews, many people came and some got the job. Important for me was to find a seamstress who would understand me and I did! A young girl, her name was Tony. She was really incredible and eager to learn, she stayed with us through thick and thin and of course became the head seamstress. We saw her fall in love, getting married and having babies. It was great to be in the factory , nice atmosphere, nice people and some were curious and liked what they were doing and knew they were appreciated by us and would do anything for us, like working sometimes to very late at night because things had to go…

Yes, Spain was wonderful, I love Spain and Elda was great, the nice weather, the beautiful mountains with an old castle here and there in the background, the factory and every thing one needed almost at hand… I say “almost” because at times I had to compromise for different reasons, it could be because of the great expenses, a new mold for a heel had to be made up by hand ( first cut in wood and when it is right they are made of plastic and sized to all sizes) so if I designed a special heel it was very costly to make up the molds unless you sold thousands of them which was not our case, we were just starting. But they had thousands of heel samples you could choose from of which the molds already existed, some from back in the 50-ties, all kinds of heights and shapes and there I had to compromise and get an existing one that was as close as possible to the one I had in mind. Later we were able to make up more things like settings for the stones we found or ornaments to decorate the shoe, like buckles and chains, heels and platforms.

In the meantime I worked with the wonderful things available, Spanish brocades which were a specialty in Alicante as they use it for their traditional costumes they prepare once a year when they have something like a carnival. The good ones were hand woven and absolutely gorgeous.One version with low heel….… and a higher heel (picture appeared in a magazine)

I also loved the old “mercerias”, stores where they sell ribbons and pasmanteria and tassels and other wonderful stuff, they often left me go to the back room where they kept all the things from years back, buttons and buckles and silk or plastic flowers …

Next thing we had to make the Logo,

the labels, the boxes, the cards and when all that done there was the “Elda Shoe Fair” Hire a stand, decorate and invite as many people as possible. Most visitors were from Spain but from all over and some American buyers and press. That’s how we got our first clients and the factory started to work.The factory, above left: Tony and right Tony with other seamstresses, a cutter, me with Olvido a young assistant, below Olvido, Marianni, me and Salvador and the last one, the shoemaker Paco and the manager…

By now I had learned a lot about shoes and could make myself a pattern or at least collaborate with the pattern maker as that is a real job and I had 1000 other things to do.The “Lautrec” black suede with Golden wings

Me wearing them…

and a different version.we convinced a leather company to print these leathers for usand made belts of the pieces that were left over, you could snap them any way you wanted and make it once, twice or three times go around the body….

We were still driving up and down from Alicante to El Cuarton and back and always staying in a Hotel in Elda or Alicante, which was half an hour drive from Elda but was worth it, more comfortable in front of the beach with nice restaurants around. The fish there was so good… But there is no place like home and being with the family was very important.Alegria having a picnic with Kabuli our dog. We found Kabuli as a baby abandoned in a gas station, he was beautiful. A few years later he was killed by a shepherd when he went after a herd of sheep and never having seen an Afghan hound the shepherd got scared and shot him…Alegria and Alejandro at home…

on the roof of the Muñeca, with Alegria, posing in my designs…

Marianni stayed with us and was a great help with all the work and we had fun too. Always remember driving from El Nido to Elda in her open red Porsche through the mountains in the sunshine with the wind blowing in the hair and the music on…

It was an exciting time, it was wonderful, we were lucky!

My Husband Salvador spend most of his time helping me in the business so he could paint less but still did some wonderful work, check it out in Alegria’s blog, CLICK HERE

Next time we get deeper into shoes….

LOVE and PEACE

Posted in drawings, Fashion, Friends, photography, shoes, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

GETTING INTO SHOES 2

Posted on November 20, 2011 by willyvanrooy

Oh, sorry it took so long to get back to you but we were packing and moving from Oregon back to Los Angeles. We have lived in Oregon in this ” middle of nowhere,” wonderful place called Sherwood, between Pine trees ( Douglas Fur) and friends, surrounded by fruit trees and flowers, for almost 3 years and now we felt like moving back to LA to be with our daughter and her family. A new adventure…

In the meantime in my story we are still in 1983-84. Can you imagine the 80-ties? The “House”. The “Funk,” the “Disco,” the “Saturday-night fever,” the Grunge, the big shoulders, enormous earrings and boots in all lengths, style and shape.

For us things got more serious and more complicated. Here we were on top of the mountain somewhere in the very south of Spain where now we had 2 big houses to take care of. La Muñeca was a beautiful house and huge! 13 bedrooms and different other rooms on the roof and an enormous cellar full of beautiful hand-painted Spanish ceramic plates and bowls of all sizes, which were there because the owner had ordered 1 set of each but they had delivered 6 sets of each and now they were there.

La Muñeca ( The Doll) seen from the end of the pool and from where there was a glorious view of Africa ☞

This is our first business card,drawn by Salvador with the name of our company which was”MAD”sl. MAD was standing for “Multiple Art Designs” or Money.Argent.Dinero.

Furthermore the house called “La Muñeca” was fully equipped with sheets and blankets for all the rooms and pots and pans and everything else, all of the best quality, maybe a bit less than the house we were living in “El Nido” where everything was first class, like the silverware was silver and all the plates and cups exclusive handmade, all the antiques, beautiful lamps and tables but both houses had their charm. The thing I liked most about the big house was that it had an enormous swimming pool and it was empty and painted white so it made for the best open-air photo-studio anyone can imagine.

Picture of Salvador in the “Pool” studio with one a shoe of the first collection called “star”Postcard we made from one of the pictures which we send out to a lot of shoe-stores to invite them to the Elda Shoe Fair. Well, this was all fine and wonderful but in the meantime we were far away from Elda, Alicante, and not only that but it was very hard to stay in contact. There was no telephone in either of the houses ( cell phones did not exist then) so if we wanted or needed to make a call we had to go all the way down the mountain and be lucky if someone was in the “office” to let you in and let you make a call and then if we were very lucky we got Francisco on the phone. This was all a bit of a problem but we trusted them and thought they knew what they were doing.

First collection as they arrived in their white boxes…

We found a school for Alejandro which was quiet a way away, down the mountain early in the morning and take the bus, in the afternoon up the mountain and so if we were not there he had to walk both ways and because we had to be away at times we needed a girl to take care because we were too busy. We found a lovely country girl, Maria Jose, a healthy strong young woman who could cook and everything else, it was nothing for her to kill a chicken or walk up the mountain every morning as she did not want to stay overnight unless it was really necessary, like when we were going to be away for a week and Alejandro could not stay by himself there in that big house of course.

Poster Salvador made, we sent those to all our clients to put in their store…

Now we had to go to Elda more often because the samples were ready and we decided to make up a certain amount of pairs in different sizes of each model so we would have a stock in case we started selling. Actually the factory that was making the shoes for us just needed work and convinced us that that was the way it was done, which was and is of course not the case. You make the models, take the orders and only then start the production. But as we were new to this and innocently believed what they were telling us, we had them make up a “stock”. OK, but now what? Where to put all these shoes? To have them brought up all the way to the top of the mountain seemed extreme and costly so we rented an office space in the town of Algeciras, the nearest city. OK, an other place that needed to be cleaned, painted and made ready so we worked hard and got it to look great, we even had our own telephone now so we were in a much closer contact with Francisco in Elda and one fine day we received the first shipment of shoes, big boxes full! We did not have our own shoebox designed yet so they were all in white plain shoeboxes but we could not believe our eyes when we opened them. Usually each shoe is filled up with silk paper folded to keep the shape and then each shoe is individually wrapped in some more silk-paper. Well, these that we saw in the boxes were to our astonishment wrapped in kitchen-towels and filled with toilet paper! Honestly, quiet “avant-garde” really, but not our style and there we understood that it had to be totally in our control otherwise anything could happen and did happen.

with Alegria, checking the production…

In Alicante on the way to our Hotel… both dressed by me, the sweater I knitted in Paris and the leather pants I think are still from NY. Alegria’s dress was recent, I made most of her clothes and she was my best model…

One day the girl who worked in our office a few hours a day, wanted to wash her hands but there was no water, something that happened often in Algeciras at certain hours, but she forgot to close the tab and went home and sure enough the water came back… Next day when we came to the office and opened the door we could not believe our eyes, it really was an unbelievable sight to see all these boxes floating in the water that had been running all night. Well, this was a real disaster and we realized we had to do the whole thing differently and came to the conclusion that we somehow needed our own factory so we could control the quality and the timing because it was very important things got sent to the clients in time and they all wanted it NOW!

Golden Rocky, the al-time favorite, sold it over and over again… background picture by Laurence Sackman

If there was a lot of work you could hire freelance shoemakers of which there were many in Elda and everything would be controlled by us and our leathers would not get mixed up any longer, something that happened when we had our shoes made up by an other factory, they would use my beautiful leather lining for their shoes while they used their hard ones for mine… or they would put the wrong heel, or burn the leather, did not finish them (the finishing touch is important) thats when the shoes are checked, cleaned, brushed, wrapped and put in the boxes but at times they were in such a hurry that they put them in the boxes without finishing.. We discovered this by accident! They had no idea that these shoes were going to the hottest ¨chic¨ stores.

Working in the Muñeca studio.

Anyway, we asked Francisco to look around and see what he could come up with and it did not take too long……

I will get back to you soon again and in the meantime you can enjoy Alegria´s blog about Salvador, CLICK HERE

LOVE AND PEACE

Posted in drawings, Fashion, Friends, modelling, photography, shoes, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

GETTING INTO SHOES

Posted on October 17, 2011 by willyvanrooy

Here we were in that beautiful place and with the possibility to set up a business of my liking and I had decided it was going to be shoes. Actually I knew little about shoes, for sure love them and I had designed them for YSL and sometimes had my own designs made up by a shoemaker but that’s as far as it went.
Now, where to start? It was 1982 and there was no internet we could consult but we discovered that Alicante, a Provence at the coast quite a long way from where we were, was the place where the shoe industry was located and there, a few miles from the city of Alicante, was a small town called Elda that concentrated totally on shoe making. Some other little towns and villages made shoes too but Elda was bigger and had the best reputation.
One morning we all got in the land-rover and we were on our way, a beautiful but very long drive through the high mountains and country roads. It was so far that if we left early in the morning we arrived late at night but that first trip we stayed somewhere overnight because we wanted to arrive fresh and early in Elda to investigate the situation. We went to have breakfast in town and made a telephone call ( No cell phones in that time) to the first shoe factory we saw in the Elda telephone book. Salvador explained, of course in Spanish, to the director who came to the phone, what we were looking for and he advised to call someone called ‘Alverado’ and invite him for lunch in the Elda country club, he probably could help us further. That was indeed a funny meeting, the food very good and we learned a lot. Alverado was the most advanced designer and had his own factory where he made his own line which was successful and after we explained again what we wanted to do he asked if we had our ” Hormas”? Horma is the spanish word for “Mould” or “Last” in the shoemakers language, which is a wooden or plastic form on which the shoe is moulded and mounted and which decides the shape of the shoe and the height and the width and the comfort… so indeed very important. No, no we had no moulds and it turns out that each model needs a mould and the first thing to do was to go and visit the mould makers and choose some form that would go with the designs I had prepared. We started with the one that Alverado had advised us and to our astonishment there were thousands and thousands of moulds to choose from, so many that at first it makes you dizzy but later you get used to it and you know better what you want. In the end we decided to have our own made up and so we went to the best mold crafter in Elda and had him make up 2 basic forms, 1 for high heels and 1 for flats which he made to my foot so I could fit the models.

One of our forms

Extensive days looking for leathers and other things to do with shoes….

All this took days but in the meantime there was a lot to discover and at every step we were sent to the next and after visiting several factories we found Francisco. He was the son of ” Montesinos” a well known shoe-factory owner but Francisco himself was working around in different places and someone had made him attentive to us and he spoke English!!! It was sometimes hard at that time to express myself exactly in Spanish so the fact that he spoke English and knew every corner of Elda made us take him in as our manager.

… with Francisco trying out our first models…

Although Elda had everything a shoemaker needs, it was very basic and very little fantasy. Could not find the soft Gold leather I was looking for and it had to be soft and comfy… here I got a lot of protest of the shoemakers in the factories because they were not used to doing anything different and wanted to stick to the traditional way… Also I was a woman and believe it or not in that time still something not heard of much in that little Spanish town. So because everything was so basic I had to invent little things that would make them special, so we painted the leather made holes and made them all as soft as possible but of the best quality materials.The softest of boots….

The Gladiator

Red Rocky, so well fitting, making a beautiful leg….

Venus, a best seller …

The painted leather….

We did a lot of work and after spending some time in Elda it was always great to come home and enjoy the pool and all the wonderful things there…

Back in “El Cuarton” we were now known to have resurrected the little castle and had done such a great job with the house that we were asked to take care of an other house that was empty and was next to ours… This house was much bigger then the Nido so we decided to make that place our working space….

We go there next time but for the moment you can see what Salvador is doing in Alegria’s blog, Click HERE☜

LOVE and PEACE

Posted in drawings, Fashion, Friends, Jewelry, modelling, photography, shoes, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

GOODBYE PARIS, HELLO SPAIN

Posted on October 1, 2011 by willyvanrooy

YES, we are packing and moving to Spain, it was not all of a sudden and it was not definite but we had gone there a few months and it had been great and all seemed to be prepared for us. The place we were going to, called “El Cuarton”, was a private urbanization with about 12 big houses on big pieces of land on a mountain side, with at the bottom of that mountain a small village with an office and some apartments for rent, a pool, restaurant and even a discotheque for the summer vacationers… El Cuarton was located between Algeciras, quite a big city with an important port, and Tarifa, a beautiful ancient quiet little town at the most southern point of Spain, a beautiful place with white empty beaches. It is 1981 and that is how it was but in the meantime Tarifa has become a famous place for surfers and the town is no longer quiet and the beaches no longer empty, lots of wind there which is great for the surfers but can sometimes drive you nuts! Salvador had gone first with Juan, driving all the way from Paris and had made friends with the director of “El Cuarton”, Michael, who invited the rest of the family to come and stay the summer there in one of the apartments in exchange for portraits Salvador did of his wife and son.
Read the whole story here in one of his books ¨Viaje al Cuarton¨, CLICK here for download Ebook ( half in Spanish, half in English) or CLICK HERE for the printed book.

In the time we stayed there we met some very nice people, the cook of the restaurant, a real chef, offered us to eat for free anytime in exchange for portraits Salvador did of his daughters, Robert who lived down the hill in a marvelous house and made great barbecues and was a real fan of Salvadors paintings and of course the director who did anything to get us to stay, and he organized an exhibition for Salvador of all the big pastels he had made while we were there. Alejandro had to go back to school , it was the end of the summer and we went back to Paris but Salvador stayed there to arrange things. He became good friends with Robert who asked him some time later if he would come with him to Paris to pick up a new car coming from England and then drive back with him. They came to Paris and on the way back to El Cuarton Salvador talked a lot about me and made Robert interested to know more and invest in an idea I might have for a business with my designs. In Paris he had seen my work and liked it and he agreed. Salvador called me that night to tell me and now it seemed that all was falling into place.

AU REVOIR PARIS…

When Salvador came down with the land-rover, that came with the house, we packed her full and the 4 of us were on our way, the car was so heavy it would sway from left to right, but we got there safe after a three day drive.

Our little castle was quite high in the mountain, lovely house on a few acres of land, with a gate and winding driveway. It was called “El nido del Aquila” ( the Eagles nest), don’t know who gave it that name but we were delighted to live there for a while. The owner, Samina, lived in NY and almost never came down, so it was lucky we were there that summer and that she wanted Salvador to do her portrait because thats how they started talking. She did not like the place as her husband had given it to her for her birthday but she was a bit suspicious about her husband buying that from an english woman without even ever having a look at it, besides she knew nobody in Spain. She was very happy to leave it in our care and we were happy to take care.

There was a lot to do, for one the pool was now a play-ground for frogs and other creatures and looked dark green. Salvadors brother Pedro came over to help and between all of us we first cleaned off the old paint and then painted it a perfect blue.

The house needed a lot of care because the humidity was of a very high level, days on end we could be in the clouds but surprisingly when you got down the mountain the sun was shining, it was also a favorite place for the rain to play, the clouds would gather there as the wind came from all the directions.

Bella Alegria

Pict: Cooky Debidour

my sweethearts happy in the Spanish country side

Once the house was put in order, decorated and repaired we started thinking seriously what to do. I did not have to think long, it seemed logic to me: SHOES! A dress, coat, pants or anything I could make but shoes… it was very hard to find nice shoes at that time and the man who produced the shoes for YSL, (Andre Pfister I think) told me I had an excellent eye and talent for shoes and their proportions and he gave me a beautiful last, a form of the foot in wood on which the shoe is made, like saying ‘ go ahead, here is a start’, and most of all Spain is one of the countries in Europe that actually have a shoe industry… so all this put together….

… SHOES IT WAS GOING TO BE

CLICK here to get to Alegria’s blog and see what Salvador is up to at the same time!

LOVE and PEACE

Posted in drawings, Fashion, Friends, modelling, Painting, photography, shoes, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

DESIGNING IN PARIS – 6

Posted on September 19, 2011 by willyvanrooy

Times they are a changing……

In 1980 and 1981 I was drawing a lot for Yves St. Laurent and for me this was such a pleasure that I made each drawing a really nice one which was maybe not that necessary because after all it was for the designs they bought them. But Anne Marie told me that she really liked the fact that if she asked, for example, for T shirts I would also draw the belts and the jewelry. She really liked my drawings so I tried to make them as wonderful as I could.

One day in 1981 she offered me a real job, not freelance like I had done up till now, but in the YSL Design Studio which I knew well as I often went there and of course here was another dream-job for any one in my field of work, but…. although I did not answer straight away this time, but thought about it, in my heart I knew I was going to answer again: I can’t do it….… because I could not, an other adventure was in the making and like I told you I follow my heart.

Anne Marie Muñoz has been an important person for me, so kind, so beautiful, such great taste and wonderful manners, always impeccable with her dark red lips and of course dressed in YSL, she helped me a lot and made me feel protected, I will never forget her. An other wonderful woman I won’t forget is Claude Brouet, at the time chief editor at ELLE and later at MARIE CLAIRE and now at Hermes, she had a vision in Fashion , an incredible eye and very kind, I like her so very much. And the wonderful Irene Sylvagni, then editor in chief at French Vogue and now the right hand of Yojhi Yamamoto, she impressed me a lot because of her free spirit and wonderful eye for Fashion. These 3 women have inspired me and influenced me, even if they don’t know they did so, and I am forever grateful to have had the change to meet them and work with them. ( if you click on their highlighted names you can read more about them).

The drawings above (and 4 jewelry drawings) are in my possession because somewhere in the late 80′s when YSL was being sold, Anne Marie gave these drawings back to me and said: ‘I like you to have these drawings, Yves liked them very much and I think you can do something with them one day’ .. Anne Marie, Anne Marie, how thoughtful…
Anyway I have them and think to sell them, after all they are a document of Fashion of that time and they have been through the hands and eyes of the master himself…

In the meantime… showing you some family pictures of that time, I even printed those myself in the Darkroom of a friend…

Alegria was growing up

Alejandro was doing well in school (his French teacher called to meet us and told us Alejandro had a great talent for writing and compared him to Flaubert and Rimbaud). He was doing a part in a popular French movie ” Alone in the world” a famous tear sucker which plays every year around christmas on TV. His mother in the movie was Petula Clark.…

Salvador was painting like always but because of circumstances he had to drive with his friend Juan Prat to the south of Spain as Juan himself could not drive. There in Spain he met Samina, a Pakistani princess of whom he made a portrait and who would lend us her house for several years and he met Robert, who would become an important person in our lives. Next time I will tell more about this because here things are starting to change and that was the reason I did not accept the wonderful job Anne Marie was offering me.…
Paris had been great, we had done a lot of things, we had met a lot of wonderful people, we had made friends, we enjoyed the best parties…Yes, Paris is a great place to live, we loved to walk around and go to the museums and exhibitions and to wonderful restaurants. Around the corner from where we lived were 2 incredible ones, one very famous as the stars of theater and TV would go there, great food and open till very late and the other one was in Rue Chaptal, we found it by accident because it was in front of Alejandro’s school. We called it ” The Ladies” because they were 3 sisters doing the whole thing. It was so good we went there whenever we could and brought our friends but like with all good things the word spreads fast and after a year or 2 it got so busy you had to call to make a reservation well in advance, of course the prices went way up, but still, an incredible place. Then there was “Dominique”, a Russian restaurant we liked a lot, Blinis with Caviar and Chicken a la Kiev, not to forget “Clos de Lilas” La Coupole and some other favorites. Enfin, Paris has everything and too many things to tell here… for now I leave you with some more family pictures.

We are now getting ready to go to Spain….
Don’t forget to check Alegria’s blog to know what Salvador is doing, CLICK here

LOVE and PEACE

Posted in drawings, Fashion, Friends, Jewelry, modelling, Painting, photography, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

DESIGNING IN PARIS-5

Posted on September 8, 2011 by willyvanrooy

It is 1980 and I started drawing a collection of shoes for Yves Saint Laurent and when I had 24 of them I called Anne Marie Muñoz and went to see her at Avenue Marceau, the official “house” of YSL. I had been there often for fittings and private shows so I knew a lot of people there, but this felt different. I was quiet nervous and at the same time excited to show my drawings as I myself really liked them. Good for me Anne Marie did so too and so I got my first check as a free lance designer and it was a good one. I had hoped they would buy at least 6 but they bought all 24 of them!

These are photo copies of some of the shoes, the originals are in the YSL archives.

They have an incredible organization, “the Museum” Anne Marie called it, there they keep all the documentation and designs and now I was there too. Anne Marie told me to try my hand on some boxes for Eau de toilette and soap or parfum for Opium or Rive Gauche…
One in silver and blue
or a different version..

I did dozens of them and jewelry, umbrellas, handbags, evening bags, fabrics, T shirts, scarfs and so on, all the accessories…

Photo copy of evening bag in Gold leather…

..and some jewelry..

These drawings of jewelry are scanned from the originals which are in my possession. Next time I will tell you how I got them back after they were sold to YSL.

I also designed fabrics for Karl Lagerfeld and when I saw his show and all the beautiful girls came out wearing silk dresses with the designs I had been making at home I really felt good, I thought it was quiet an incredible experience.

picture in Woman’s Wear Daily

Next post I will tell you more about that wonderful time…

The family….

and don’t forget to check my husband Salvador Maron in Alegria’s Blog.. CLICK HERE.

LOVE and PEACE

Posted in drawings, Fashion, Jewelry, Painting, photography, shoes, Uncategorized | 12 Comments

DESIGNING IN PARIS – 4

Posted on August 29, 2011 by willyvanrooy

MAKING DECISIONS

It is early 1979, Cooky and I are working on our new collection,

… And me like always, stitching away, making up the models.

We had big dreams and decided to do the Paris Fashion-Fair, which is an important Fair during the Paris Fashion week when all the buyers from everywhere come to see the shows and make orders for the next season and we wanted to show our latest collection. To do that Fair was a mistake because the clients, or future clients, actually wanted to come to see our shop and have a private time with us to make orders, I mean, we were right there! But we were new at this and did not know. It broke our bank because it was very expensive, we wanted a small stand but they only had big ones left so even more expensive and then it was the worst place of the whole Fair, somewhere hidden near the exit, so everyone who passed was already exhausted. Of course the best places went to the people who do that Fair always so it was fair but very disappointing for us. The place looked hideous and it was quite some work to set it up and in the end it looked very beautiful but all in all a lot of money and a lot of energy spent for not much in exchange, although we did get some nice write-ups in the papers and some new clients that would make an appointment to come to the store! Our biggest new client was Bergdorf and Goodman who promised us a whole window on 5th Avenue NY, they were so enthusiast.

Ph: Francois Lamy

The collection consisted of Tight Pants, Loose Pants w/pockets, Sweater with long sleeves, Sweater without sleeves, Body Suit,Long Vest, Mittens and Hat and a Belt, all made out of a beautiful woolen jersey in 8 different colors, with endless possibilities to combine…

Ph. Tony Kent

the little bag and belts…

The long vest…. in the back ground painting of Patrick and Blanca that Salvador did and above my head an other marvelous painting by Salvador of a Moroccan carpet…

Like I said we were dreaming big but in the meantime everything else was going on
And Alegria was crawling, walking and then she was one.

Alejandro now went to a nearby school in Rue Chaptal which was a 3 minute walk…

And of course there were lots of great parties, incredible parties, by Karl Lagerfeld, Marie Helene de Rothchild, Yves Saint Laurent and of course in the Palace which was the Hottest place and it was good to socialize, that’s how it goes. We had become friends with Paloma Picasso and Rafael Lopez-Sanchez who had a theatrical group called TSE and when they got married we were among the 40 guests invited for the unforgettable wedding dinner given by Karl Lagerfeld which was of course incredible and even some old friends of her father made a speech… Paloma asked me to be the face on the invitation of the new Play called SUCCES and she used the same picture as an immense backdrop in the decor she designed for the last act. It was a happening…

I was working occasionally…This is a cover for Marie-Claire ( a detail ) Ph. Laurence Sackman

And I also still was doing the shows because I really enjoyed that.

YSL

Then there was the dinner I have thought of at times because I had to make a decision and sometimes have wondered if I made the right one, of course it was right because I followed my heart but things might have been different? It was Anne Marie Muñoz (directrice at YSL studio) who had invited us but that was not unusual, she invited us often, but what was unusual was that Pierre Bergé himself was there, I did not expect anything but when Salvador and I were leaving, we were the last to leave, already in the hallway to say good-bye, when Anne Marie asked me out of the blue: Would I be the model for Yves Saint Laurent to make his next collection on, in other words be his muse, his inspiration and model, which needs dedication, maybe long and irregular hours every day, but of course something any model at that time would dream of but…. that means I won’t be with Alegria, I want to be with her and Cooky, can not leave her alone at this moment with a new collection at hand… all these things went through my head in a flash… and I said : No, I won’t be able to do it! And that was it, instead I could have said let me think about it and we talk tomorrow, I would have talked with Cooky and we would have looked it over and it would have been cool with her as I would have made money to help us because soon we learned ” no business is done without money”. In other words we had gone overboard with taking lots of orders for the new collection which was made of that beautiful quality expensive jersey and after making our calculations we knew we needed rolls and rolls of it in all that different colors and so we went to order it…

In this kind of places, that sell to designers and are very official whole sale, they have no stock, it has to be made up and although for us it was a lot, for them it was peanuts and the total bill was shockingly high, which as such was no problem but they wanted the money up front and that yes, was a problem! It was a lot and because nobody knew us, there was no way to solution it, the bank would not give us a loan because we did not have any assets, only Cooky’s old car, ha ha . We tried very hard to find the money but time was pressing and we did not succeed, lots of trouble with the fabrication, waiting for the clients to pay, it was too much, we were exhausted and we finally gave up, cancelled everything… we realized that it is not a good thing to grow too fast, we were not prepared!

I did not give up making clothes, one jacket, very fitting, in different sizes and different fabrics, also pants, 1 size fits all, usually made of silk. These were sold privately but again, too much work for too little pay.

Here I am wearing one of the jackets and pants I made and sold… Life size portrait of me by Salvador Maron

….…After that dinner I was never more asked to walk the shows of YSL, Alejandro did though, he came out as a flower bearer with the bride and a little girl, beautifully dressed…

I started drawing, which is something that makes me happy and one day Salvador said to me: you should show your drawings to Anne Marie and so when she came to see us Salvador told her about my drawings and I showed them to her. She liked them and said: Why don’t you design some shoes for YSL and you call me… and so I did…

That was 1979, quiet a year…

and don’t forget to get into Alegria’s blog to follow what Maron is doing at the same time, CLICK HERE

LOVE and PEACE

Posted in drawings, Fashion, Friends, modelling, Painting, photography, shoes, Uncategorized | 10 Comments

ALEGRIA !

Posted on August 15, 2011 by willyvanrooy

Que ALEGRIA, is what Salvador’s mom said when the baby was born and turned out to be a girl. We did not know if it was going to be a boy or a girl, although we sort of wished for a girl and so that is what she said when Salvador called her and told her it was a girl: Que Alegria!..”ALEGRIA” ( as we probably all know is Spanish for “happiness,merriment, joy) and then out dear friend Cooky thought that was a great name for the little baby girl, as we did not have a name yet, and that is how alegria is Alegria.
It’s October 3 1978 and here is our Alegria, just born, washed and dressed, Hello world!

Once home she was introduced officially to the family:
Salvador’s mom, grandma Margarita… who had come over from Madrid

very proud Daddy…

Big brother Alejandro…

sweet Petit Loup wants to know her too…

and with mammy

… Some of the congratulations that came with the flowers.

This was of course a very important happening in our lives but the world goes on and there were lots and lots of things to do…

Still there was always time to go for a walk and the cemetery was a perfect beautiful quiet place….

In the meantime the shop was going strong and we had now an adition of a long reversible coat of 2 different color velvets as well and a short jacket that was also reversible with one side the flower print and the other side velvet. Now we have to look for fabrics for our next collection… so we go there next post.

This post is dedicated to my beautiful daughter Alegria and don’t forget to check her blog and her writings about her father Salvador Maron, Click, click.

he is painting as always and made a.o. this portrait of our friends Mercedes and Barry and Manuela..they really posed for it…

… and his mom…

…And for the friends who are reading this but only saw this post, I like you to know that you can go back to the first post and so on by clicking on the months on the right there…it is starting in January, you see it? Like that you can see all the posts you want, or if you prefer you can also scroll down…

LOVE and PEACE

Posted in Fashion, Friends, modelling, Painting, photography, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

DESIGNING IN PARIS – 3

Posted on August 6, 2011 by willyvanrooy

Wow, things are going good and time to open a shop! It had to be at walking distance so no tiresome transports, enough space to have a room in the back where we could work and it did not take us long to find a wonderful looking place right around the corner of Rue de Douai where I lived: 22 Rue Fontaine-Paris 9eme. The thing I liked was that it had 2 windows opposite each other making a corner to the entrance, so they were really big and they had some mirrored pillars in them. We made very funny windows, like one window all in black and white and the other one in the same order but all in color or one window like it is a mirror of the other and so on, that was great fun specially because we did have 2 window dolls in my image to dress up. The shop itself was in a sad condition when we found it but with the help of Salvador, physical as well as financially, we got it to look incredible, it looked more like a very cozy living room than a boutique.
It was great, nobody seemed to mind it was right there in Pigalle, the Rolls Royces stopped right in front to have the rich and famous just dash into the shop. It was so funny for us to think where it was made and where it was going…
Painting Salvador did of me which was hanging in the boutique

Now with the shop being set up it was also time to explore America and the chance to do so came from friends in Holland who had a famous shop in Amsterdam called: Puck and Hans and we were in contact because they sold our tunics there. They were going to do the American Fashion Fair in NY and asked me if I would pose for them in their clothes, ( I was still a model) in exchange that we could have a part of their stand to show our line. Now we only had to pay for our trip and stay so it was very attractive and Cooky and I went…
This poster collage I made for Puck and Hans and not long ago he (Hans) send it to me on Face Book and like I said, although we made tons of pictures, I lost them all so it was great to see this one .In the collage you can see Puck ( the statue) and Hans (with my dress on) and Cooky and me having fun in NY city. We also had a chance to visit American Vogue where we were so well received by Polly Allen Mellon and all her crew and they all bought our outfits and even made a picture with a little write up for Vogue and later Polly wrote me a very long letter saying how much she liked it. We also met with Carry Donovan, famous fashion editor, who bought one outfit for her self and one for Diane Vreeland, in red of course, and later wrote me by hand a very nice letter telling me that Mrs Vreeland was very happy with the dress. Karl Lagerfeld took me out one night with Andre Leon Talley, and we went to the craziest nightclubs somewhere very downtown, was funny and as everybody who is in the fashion business knows, the New York Fashion week is an exciting time.
Some write up in The WWDaily and the NY Times..

Back in Paris lots of work was waiting again as we now had quiet some stores in America who had ordered, Henry Bendels and IF among others in NY, Maxfield in Los Angeles, in Texas, Chicago and nationwide in Saks and other Department stores. We were still struggling with all the work, the money and the legalities. We always had to pay up front but had to wait quiet a while before getting paid by the stores which were many now, all over France, specially in St Tropez and Cannes, in Spain, Germany, Italy, Holland and Belgium and they are always in a hurry and then the re-orders came in and we had to think of new pieces to complete the line. Luckily we got help from a lovely girl, friend of Cooky, by the name of Sophie Bouchara, she was adorable and a great help.
We made this postcard to send around ( Ph. Tony Kent, collage by Willy)

We had a lot of famous clients and saw pictures all over of people wearing it, we even made little ones for children and short ones like a shirt for boys and even Alejandro was wearing one..
… and below a friend wearing it, Lara Koski, here in Los Angeles with her son Kaylan in around 1977
..and Pia Frithof my friend and lovely model, looking wonderful in the whole outfit, even the skirt that went with it as well, no end to the way you could combine it..

Alejandro and Apple playing Cleopatra and Antonio, he wearing the Tunic and she the pants….

… some still have it and some still wear it or the daughters or grand daughters wear it… below is Ava Hervier of Lipstick Std wearing it here and now, clicking on her name you can see her video and hear her sing.
.. and myself here below, posing for myself a few days ago in the tunic a friend had kept and gave me, the pants were kept by my sister…, consider that it is not easy to push the button and then have 10 seconds to run to your place and pose… ha ha and of course a bit of Photoshopping…

We are in mid 1978 and something very important and different is happening…

I am pregnant…

more next time and don’t forget to look up Salvador in Alegria’s blog. CLICK CLICK.

LOVE AND PEACE

Posted in drawings, Friends, Jewelry, modelling, Painting, photography, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

DESIGNING IN PARIS – 2

Posted on July 29, 2011 by willyvanrooy

There is no place like home and although it had been fantastic staying in the country, it was great to be home again and have all our own things around. I had it clear what I wanted to do so I called my close friend Cooky Debidour as I knew she would be open to undertake something with me and explained the idea about the Tunic I had in mind. In my travels I had seen it in many different forms and from more than 2000 years ago till now women and men have been wearing Tunics so it must be OK. I always loved it because it looked so comfortable and colorful and now I wanted to do my own interpretation simply because I wanted to wear it myself. So this classic, interpreted by me, became a wide Tunic with open neck and a small Chinese collar always lined in a different color as well as the cuffs on the inside of the sleeves. The Tunic was not that long, more like an over sized shirt till the knees, apart from the sleeves which were not too wide and long because that is not comfortable. Then there was the pants which actually came in 3 or 4 sizes + a one size fits all but the fitting ones were great, very good cut I was proud of and very smart looking with just a T shirt. The Tunic was “one size fits all” ( it really did) and in at least 8 different colors and different materials which all would be possible to mix together. It came with a belt as well that was 3 yards long so you could wrap it around several times or use it for something different like a wash line to hang your laundry.
We made this poster for all the shops that was selling our “Tunique Unique” and I am sorry I don’t have it in color, lost almost all the pictures and my press book full of newspaper and Magazine cuttings from all over the world, but I have a few to show you here.
It was very hard work, first design and make up name-tags, look for the materials in different shops in Rue Goutte d’Or where it always smelled of heads of lamb they were grilling outside, negotiating for the best price because the same thing in an other store was prized differently. We found this lovely flowered materials from China in many wonderful colors and for the moment there was a lot of it. OK, now the pattern, which I made, also of the pants in my size but they had to be professionally sized in 4 different sizes and once that done we had to find an atelier ( workshop) where they would actually make them. Here came a problem because in every place we looked into told us we had to have them make a certain amount of pieces that was much too much for us and quiet impossible because we were starting small! We ended up, via via, with a small Atelier of Turks ( people from Turkey) that had no working permits but they could sew very well although they were all men and they would do anything we asked for a reasonable price. This place was in Belleville , a part of Paris not so Belle, and there in a small apartment they had a workshop set up with some sewing machines and tables to cut the materials and where they would sleep on at night. They would cook and fry on a tiny stove right there on the cutting table, with lots of grease and honestly we had to hang out the clothes and air them for at least a day before we could send them away because they also all smoked like trains and hardly ever opened a window. One time when Cooky and I went on inspection there I really literally fainted. We had to overlook all the time because they could make the most incredible mistakes like cutting the opening of the collar in the back instead of the front, which is not the same thing and since they were always cutting a whole bunch at the same time… We were wrestling with all that when the orders started to come in…

Anna Piaggi did this very nice thing in Italian Vogue and Tracy Weed (model that became photographer) made the pictures and between Ana and Karl Lagerfeld they organised these wonderful personalities as models and they each had a different take on it…This is only a photocopy of a photocopy but I enlarged some here so you can see a little bit better how each one wears it her or his way… here are the links to all of them, Tracy Weed, Heidi Moravetz, Emanuela Papatakis, Loulou de La Falaise, Joan J.Buck, Paloma Picasso, Anja Lopez, Jacques de Bascher, and below the pictures a bit bigger:

Cooky and I packed our bags full and went selling to the model agencies, it was crazy we sold a lot even that it was not that cheap but everybody wanted it and so easy to sell because it would always fit, except the pants and if we did not have the size in stock we would make it up in a few days but it was mostly OK because all the colours looked nice together so if there was no blue in a particular size well, then green would do or yellow or red…
with Cookygoing out to sell,