DESIGNING FOR PAULA ABDUL

We just arrived in LA, it is June 2 1992, Salvador, who was already there, came with Nancy to pick us up. It felt good to be in Los Angeles again, the first time I was there was 1968 so that was 24 years back and it looked quite different but smelled the same, that balmy air in the evening filled with gas-exhaustion and honeysuckle.
Here (above) we are in Nancy’s kitchen when we just arrived, Alegria went straight to sleep so she is not in the picture. All together we spent a lot of time in Nancy’s kitchen during the time we stayed with her, which was almost a year and it was a real blessing. She is such a good cook, very health conscious and many other good things, Check her here! She would take us hiking early in the morning to that big mountain without end. In the beginning you arrive huffing and puffing and think you will not do it again but you get better at it every day and the view at the top overlooking The Valley makes it even better. Nancy went everyday and on one of these hikes she met Paula Abdul who was hiking there as well, and somehow Nancy talked to her about me (she is a good agent) and Paula gave her number and told Nancy to have me call her.

I drove upto Paula’s house in our big vintage Buick and Paula herself opened the door of her house in a gated property somewhere in Beverly Glenn. She looked very cute, small and delicate with a lovely open face, I felt good immediately. For the occasion I had dressed up with my latest creation and my shoes from the last collection hoping to make a good first impression, ha ha, and I did because she made me meet her lawyers and manager so they could work on getting me a working permit and decide what kind of contract they were going to put up for me. It took quite something to get me that working permit, lots and lots of paper work to proof she could not do without me. After some time I got it and I was to be on a monthly retaining salary (a good one) until the day she was going to work on her world tour, which was planned for the following year, she first had to come out with her new CD. Well, honestly, this could not be better, going around the world for a year taking care of and designing the costumes for Paula Abdul and her Dance group, wow, what a dream. For the moment I was just to design things for her if there was a special event, like a TV interview or her workout tape she was preparing and for that I was paid separately. I also would go shopping with her at times but mostly there was not much I HAD to do but I made her myself a bunch of outfits and she looked so amazing in them that it was a real pleasure for me to do. It was really nice to work with her, she was very kind and funny, she introduced us to Emilio Estebez and some of his friends, to her mother and sister, took us to some VIP performances of her friends, like Prince, and what I most enjoyed was going with her when dancers came to audition. Young dancers full of energy and hope and wow, some were very very good. Of course Paula is an extra ordinary dancer herself, as a matter of fact she is amazing. Remember so well that Video-clip her dancing with an animated cat, every time it came on we used to look at it. I realized how hard it is to be so in the public eye, all the things you have to hear and read, its devastating. But that’s the price you pay I guess. Let me show you a few things I did for her, so sorry in that time there were no iPhones and so on, it was sometimes complicated to take a picture, the big camera you have to prepare, and it is a very sensitive matter to take pictures of a famous person. They have enough pictures taken already and in my contract I had to promise never tell or show anything personal to anybody about Paula… so I won’t, what I am showing here is public and mostly pictures made by me with her permission.

This is the first thing I designed for her, had the boots made up in Spain to go with the suit which I had sewn up by a seamstress, the vest I made myself for her. This picture was in a newspaper.

this dress I made for her for a TV program in memory of Bob Hope where she was to give a speech.

rehearsing the text in the limousine on her way to the show..

This dress looked great on her I thought.. here with Emilio Estebez.

Ready for her filmed interview to promote her workout dance video. The knee length jacket is silk with the collar of bright yellow taffeta silk worked with black ribbon. The same brocade vest as she is wearing with the suit, it was very fitting which made her a very nice figure. I even made the buttons I see.. and of course the bracelets.

I made her this for her work out tape

Purple velvet coat with silk animal print lining and purple “purple heart” boots and gold leather bracelets… and even the necklace I made…

I made her this coat for the Arsenio Hall show she was going to appear on. Alejandro is holding it here and some of his input is worked in there. The material was vintage from a famous weaver in Spain combined with black lace. She talked about me to Arsenio who loved her style and kept looking at her boots… .

I actually made this one of silver lamé combined with black lace and decorated with lots of “silver” lognets hanging …

these are just a few, made lots of drawings for her but only some were made up of course.

I also designed a whole collection of Work out Dance wear ….

Too many to show here, it would be a book but it certainly was a lot of fun, I could work when I wanted and where I wanted unless it was something specific.

I made this picture of her while she was being photographed for a Spanish Magazine, she knows how to pose very well, no wonder, as she is such a far-out dancer.. I think modeling has something to do with dancing in the sense that in both cases you are conscious and controlling your body to get a certain result.

But.. after the excitement came the disappointment because Paula never went on that world tour and so they did not need me anymore. It had been a wonderful one and a half year and am glad I met her but it was time again to look for new horizons…..

Don’t forget to look up Alegria’s blog to see what Salvador is creating,!

LOVE and PEACE

HASTA LUEGO MADRID…

Yes, we are leaving for Los Angeles but before we left I made a collection of sunglasses which was great fun. The whole family put their ideas in and because the Olympics were going to be in Barcelona we made some special designs for that occasion. We hoped to sell them and we tried, but no success. Like we tried one company that produces fairly nice glasses, they looked at all the drawings attentively and then said : No. thats not for us, but in the meantime they saw all the designs . So that was it, we did not really try too hard to sell them but here they are…

Sunglasses designs, Madrid 1992

Now Alegria and I are really leaving for Los Angeles, it’s July 1992 and Salvador will meet us there while Alejandro is going to stay in Madrid.
Hasta luego Madrid, for sure we visit again….

LOVE and PEACE

MY SHOE EXHIBITION, the world at your feet.

It was the end of 1990 when the opening of my exhibition took place, lots of people, friends and shoe fans joined me in this quiet unusual event. Unusual because it was hardly ever done before, at least in Madrid, to have an exhibition of Fashion rather then paintings or sculptures. It was great fun , I had been painting shoes, had plenty of drawings and models of the shoes I had made. Salvador specially made a portrait of me and other things we prepared together. Alejandro helped with his always brilliant ideas and with very little money but a lot of input , we made it look great.

the official invitation for the opening

.. and the first page of my exhibition guestbook by the very appreciated painter Sygfrido martin Beque

The whole idea to do an exhibition came months before when Gallery AF contacted me and asked me if I would be interested and of course I was. I was making little paintings of my shoes and since it was the first time I worked in oil I got very involved and it was hard to get up from the chair in front of the easel, just like Salvador who once he gets in front of his work does not hear or see anything else and you can talk to him, it does not enter and he does not eat unless you put it in front of him and insist, that till as late as light permits. Well, with some instructions and insights from Salvador, I arrived at this…

and this…

and these…

below portrait salvador did of me, it was life-size and its a pity here you can’t see the feet with my blue and gold shoes…

Psychedelic

and some drawings

love boots..

and shoes, shoes, shoes..

This was a critic of my exhibition in Spanish Elle, march 1991, and I will translate it here in case you don’t speak spanish.

Exposing or die

The where and why of Fashion is not limited to catwalks and specialized fairs. There is a step in between the design and the consumption of Fashion: the Art galleries, which are bringing the outsider designers more near the general public.

During the last month of last year we saw a lot of exhibitions, the one I liked best was of the designer of the Atomic-Venetian shoes and complements Willy van Rooy. The marvelous shoes of Willy have a life of their own and also history. The tittle” The world at your feet” is an irony, although I would have preferred something like ” splitting hairs” That is what the designer is looking for and finds, disproving the cursed saying. Nothing better than a Gallery to show this daring artistry that would not have had the leading part on the cat-walk.

and yes, now thinking about it 20 years later, it was a perfect closure of my shoe designing time.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

designing jewelry…

..here drawn on Linda, 1991

Some of the hats I designed which I photographed here on Celine, my friend with the striking face. She was not a model but I thought her very beautiful….

and below the wedding dress I designed for Angelique when she married Louis Cobos, renowned director-conductor and composer.

Salvador was doing well in Los Angeles and Alegria and I prepared to go there now… Alejandro wanted to stay, so he stayed in the apartment and Alegria and I arrived in LA on the 2nd of July 1992 where Salvador, Nancy and another adventure was awaiting us.

picture Hugh Scofield

Don’t forget to go to Alegria’s post where you can follow Salvador Maron

LOVE and PEACE

MADRID, CITY OF COLORFUL NIGHTS…

Madrid was baptized “city of the night” as the traffic at 3 in the morning would be the same as anytime during the day.

Now with a lot of time on my hands it was a good moment to explore Madrid, by day the wonderful Retiro park, the Rastro, the beautiful old cafe Gijon, the Circulo de Bellas Arte, El Prado, all wonderful places to hang out. By evening, the summer terraces all along the “Paseo del Castellana” full of people, laughter and chatter till late into the hot summer nights.. then up to “Morocco” a favorite at that time, beautiful decorations and all the colorful people of Madrid would pass through. ALASKA, the singer and actress, had something to do with it and she was often there, always marvelously dressed in her own wonderful style. Pedro Almodovar, Antonio Banderas, Marisa Paredes, Bibi Anderson, Miquel Bose and many famous singers, designers and other personalities would be a normal sight there.

me in that time showing off the new coat and bracelets I made, picture by Hugh Scofield

For some reason I was elected once “person of the month” in their monthly paper and my drinks were always free. They also promoted artists and often had a performance of sorts, very avant-garde and interesting. After “Morocco” there was “Stella”, a wonderful hot club discotheque, till early morning hours and then coffee and churros somewhere…..
all that was wonderful but not for every night as one had to think how to pay the rent and that was not always easy, as a matter of fact it was very difficult at times and it was a lucky stroke that Salvador could sell some paintings via our longtime American friend Nancy Mehagian with whom we had stayed in touch since Ibiza. She put Salvador in touch with Angela Rich, then wife of Lee Rich, producer of the famous TV series “Dallas”. I any case she came to visit in Madrid and it was funny because she was so chic and so well dressed climbing up the 3 stairs of our old, dark and dusty downtrodden building. But once opening the door to our place… she was enchanted and bought some of Salvador’s work and that made the wheel spin for Salvador to go to Los Angeles, stay with Nancy who would manage him. You can read all about that in Alegria’s blog, CLICK HERE.

I stayed in Madrid with Alejandro who was working and Alegria who was going to school.
I was still making up my shoes, for my friends and friends of friends, on a personal level. Since my old little factory still had all my patterns and forms and would make me anything I asked for so that worked well. Then one day my friend, the fashion photographer Sylvia Polakov introduced me to Juanjo Rochefort, known fashion designer in Madrid, he asked me to work with him and that’s what I did. I made hundreds of designs for him, he had all the famous very lady like society clients and it was great fun….
here are some of them….

A Gallery asked me to do an exhibition of my shoe work, but that’s for next time….

LOVE and PEACE

HARD RAIN WAS GONNA FALL…

pic. by Alejandro van Rooy

That was it! We got the news without suspecting a thing so it really blew us away… The factory that produced my shoes was declared bankrupt and closed to everybody! Wow… this was due to the fact that the dollar had gone down to almost half its former value, and the factory that only worked with America, had a deal to get paid in dollars. This time the dollar went so far down that the factory went down with it, me included! Of course I had actually nothing to do with it and I even had an eight page contract, but what to do? I tried and tried and talked with who ever I thought could help but they had been so kind to offer me what they did; and now when there was no money, was I to sue them on top of that? No way, the hassle alone would make me feel bad and so I was pretty stuck, no patterns, no models, no way to send whatever was ready to the clients who were angry with me (and that was very understandable).

A great shoe store in NY called ” Tootsy Plohound” had finally, after many years, come to trust us enough to make an enormous order of about half his stock and now they were getting nothing. Time was running out and everybody was terribly upset with me, so now where to turn? Here we were with a big debt to pay to the bank, a store that hardly worked, a factory that was closed. Many shoe factories in Elda closed down at that time but the people that had worked in our own factory were still there… and as a matter of fact they were selling copies of my shoes to my Spanish clients as they still had patterns, forms and samples of mine! That was an other “slap in the face” so to speak because the designs, patterns and the forms were mine but at the same time they were not; The people of my old factory had no taste and would badly improvise and use different materials and so on, but at least they did not put my name on the shoes. I would forgive them if they would do my shoes again and save what could be saved and they agreed. We needed money to go on and via friends in Holland we found, or they found us, I don’t remember, a Dutchman who lived near where the shoe factory was . He had an old castle he was restoring and owned a lot of properties around there. He was a business man and was ready to invest money to restart the whole thing. He had an American girlfriend who was going to supervise the factory so that would give me the liberty to just design. It was a lot of hard work to put the little factory back together again and make the collection again but we more or less did. Now it was very important to me to do the Fashion Fair in Paris to show we were still there and going strong. First my investor would not agree ” too much money” and indeed it was expensive but one has to make publicity. In the end I got my way and we all went to Paris…

It was quite successful and we got some very nice orders a.o. from Niemann and Marcus, very chic..

When I was in Los Angeles I went to see the store on Wilshire Blvd, very chic indeed and there it was, my hand bags beautifully displayed near the entrance in a room by its own, my handbags and Paloma Picasso handbags side by side, Wow! Come to think of it I also sold my handbags well in a store that Gunilla Lindblad had opened in Paris, which was a beautiful store…

But then again, American Vogue was so enthusiast that they asked for a lot of models of shoes and bags and belts to photograph and I thought this was great. For me it was very important to be in the magazines but the Dutchman did not agree- too expensive! Yes indeed it is expensive to make up the models in big sizes before the production because it has to be specially done, the patterns have to be scaled and a cutter and seamstress have to make up the model one by one and then of course the magazines don’t pay for them, but in exchange you get that great publicity! I always made up a bunch of models to be photographed by the magazines but now could not do it, I did not get my way which made me very sad and things never got better when the time went on…

One day I made a surprise visit from Madrid to the factory in Elda and saw to my astonishment that the factory was making completely different eventless shoes that were designed by the American girlfriend who was supposed to oversee my production, now using the factory with my forms and my people to make her own stuff, which was far from exciting, and try to sell them to my clients.
Sometimes things are too much, I felt betrayed, I felt lost and I had to let go… I had to let go for the good of my family and my sanity…. So that was it!
Gave up the shop, oh oh , all the work it had been, gave up the factory and gave up everything. We left the people who had always worked with us, all the things of the factory that were ours and I gave them permission to copy my shoes as long as they did not use my name.

in silk and gold cord decoration, every shoe done by hand..

In the Footwear news, lots of silk and crosses full of stones..

satin and golden or silver cross…

Brocade boot with black cord decoration, all done by hand…

Suede and gold leather with heart full of stones..

Postcard I made for the clients..

Gold leather flats, very soft..

more shoes, suede and crosses and gold and stones…

It was a difficult time but at the same time a time to be creative and do things one has normally no time for and my paintbrushes were ready….,

LOVE and PEACE

TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGING

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

BUILDING A SHOP…

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

HOLA MADRID!

inspecting the new place -picture by Sylvia Polakov

Yes, we found this incredible apartment in Madrid via our lawyer and friend Fernando M. so it was a good time to move and live in the big city for a while. I have to mention a few details about this place we moved into because it was pretty special. A corner building placed in the middle of old downtown Madrid, somewhere between the Royal Palace and the famous Theaters, calle Atocha 14, just a step away from Plaza Del Sol and on the other side the marvelous Plaza Mayor with its terraces and old fashioned boutiques with hats and caps and fans and other famous Spanish goodies and around the corner the popular “Rastro” the second hand market, which was one of my favorite places to visit. First of all the whole building with its 5 floors was more or less abandoned except for the very top and the second floor. On the ground-floor there was a bar on the corner ( it was a corner building), and a small workshop of a guitar maker who was famous for his excellent guitars he made by hand. Each apartment covered the whole floor and had 11 balconies, 8 rooms of which some were enormous. The first floor was empty and had been for years. The second floor was occupied by a lady who was 94 years old and her maid. Every day she got done up with make up and beautiful jewels and sat at the table in her living room that had not changed in the last 30 years, very nice furniture was displayed in all the rooms. She never came out of the house but I would go visit her at times. She paid the same rent as when she moved in in the 1920-ties which came to about 8 US $ a month. We got the third floor, on the 4th floor was a big artist studio with skylights and all but we did not take it because it was very abandoned and there was no water but later a painter came to work there. We had such a big place that we did not need an extra studio. The very top which was the attic had 2 small rooms, one occupied by Dora, who had been the maid of the owner and had lived there since always, she was in her 70-ties but everyday climbed these big stairs to her tiny tiny place where one hardly could turn around, and in half of the place she could not stand up straight because of the roof. She was quite pretty but her life had been to be a maid and to never get married. The other small place was occupied by the family that ran the bar downstairs, they were quite dysfunctional but had 2 daughters more or less Alegria’s age so we got to know them pretty well and they were funny. The building was more than 100 years old, a plaque in the entrance said “built in 1881” with a drawing in stone of a horse and carriage. It had been a beautiful high class building but had been empty, except for the people I told you about , for the last 20 years. No one had ever cleaned the beautiful stairway, with a sky light that made the most beautiful light for pictures, or the fantastic entrance. When we first saw the place we were in shock but the space was so incredible that we got enthusiastic and started to fix it up. The marble floors which were completely black became a black and white pattern again and we cleaned and painted till all the rooms were useable. Like I said there were 11 balconies with high French windows and very high sculpted ceilings but no heating except for the old fashioned system, for which you needed a servant to do nothing else than keeping the stove going which sends the hot water through the whole house , working with cole or wood. We tried but it was impossible. Salvador and I each had our fabulous studio, a very happy place to work and we did work a lot.

Painting of the main living room by Salvador Maron

with Kabuli after we just moved in…

article in the New York Times….

picture by Robert Royal.

In the meantime things were different now in Elda and I had much more time. What happened was, I was approached by a big factory that only made shoes for America, a certain pump which they sold by the thousands. They asked me if I would be part of their factory as a luxury designer which would be publicity for them as they wrote about me in the shoe papers and I had won an award. For them it was a sort of prestige and for me it meant not to have to pay salaries anymore, which was a head-ache every week because we often had to wait very long to be paid and there were lots of bills as well. I didn’t need an office anymore, they took care of everything, I only designed, chose the materials, worked with the pattern maker and the cutter and have the models made up, always in my size so I could judge the comfortability which for me was number one of importance. I also took care of the publicity and the sales with our agents. They took care of the sending and the money, I received a salary plus royalties on the shoes sold. I could stay mostly home in Madrid and work there and sometimes go to Elda to do what I have to do and stay a week or 2. An other good thing was that they knew the american sizing well and could do it all in English. The sizing was a bit complicated in the beginning because in Spain it was different from French, american or English sizes. One wonders why they are not all the same everywhere? Once when we had a big order for boots by the then super hot boutique “Joseph” in London, they asked for a lot of boots in size 5 and 5 1/2 and 6, we thought it strange but somehow thought that English girls probably had very small feet or something like that, and we made up all those boots in those sizes and got them all back because they were so small; an English 5 is a Spanish 37 or a French 7 1/2 or an American 7?

postcard for the store, picture Sylvia Polakov, collage WVR

part of a winter collection…

One of the pictures I did of “Number 1 “….

One of my favorite booties

and the same shoe without the stones photographed by Irvin Penn for American Vogue

the fur laced slipper.. as seen by me

or by the Los Angeles Times…

… or by the Spanish Vogue…

I thought the floor in our place was very photogenic

my boots for American Bazaar photographed by Scavullo…

or the same boots in “Details” Magazine.

in a Spanish magazine…

Things were quiet different now….. Things were going well…

but changes were to come…

LOVE and PEACE

ALEJANDRO, OLÉ

ALEJANDRO in the 80-tiesThis post I like to write about Alejandro van Rooy, our son, who was born in Canada and traveled with us all over the world and lived in many different places. He now lives and works as a designer in Madrid (Spain), but in the 80-ties when we had our shoe factory, Alejandro came to work with us. He liked it and was very good at it, learned all the aspects of making a shoe and was for me a great inspiration and a wonderful help. It was very important for me to have someone around who immediately understood and had the flair to come up with solutions. Being a great designer himself, he designed several models of shoes under my name and at a point even had a small line of his own … His ideas are always way ahead but yet so classic, nothing like my baroque designs, he is rather a minimalist but very definite Alejandro, which is classic with a twist. When he was little he drew already so well, whole stories with incredible details and plenty of things happening, he loved to read dictionaries and could make maps of any country in detail when he was only like 8. In other words a funny boy with lots of talent for drawing and designing. When he was 17 and tired of going to school he came to work with us in the shoe factory in Elda and later moved to Madrid to take care of the shop, together with Taria, and would come over to Elda some weekends. In the end we all moved to Madrid and instead of having to take the train from Elda to Madrid and back, we now took the train from Madrid to Elda and back when it was necessary.

Alejandro also took very nice pictures of Alegria and of me and of the shoes and plenty of drawings…… so let me show you some of his work…

here he uses his own logo “Alexandrovitch”

This was the first shoe he designed (1983) and we produced. The model was called “Alejandro ” and sold well.

The shoe is a design by Alejandro as well as the picture. Here he photographed his shoe on the head of the display doll they made of me, (I made the hat). This picture was published in a book about shoes ” Haute pointure” by Colin Mc Dowell.

this is a double page in the Spanish Vogue with a booty of golden linen with black suede decorations that is a design by Alejandro

The shoes with the red line around them are designs by Alejandro, they were very successful….

Alejandro made the most wonderful color sample books for us…

… or this funny invitation for our sales in the store… all the girls wearing our shoes and bags…

… his designs for buckles and studs…

his always very elegant designs…

with lots of humor….

Photographing his sister Alegria 1991?

or me, here in Madrid showing my “leaves” jacket…

…working in the shop….

and here you can read a great interview of Alejandro by Raquel Cristobal (Gratis Total)

… and have a look at his blog, The Pilgrim or see more of his illustrations:

well friends, next time we go on where we left off in Madrid,

LOVE and PEACE

OPENING A SHOP…..

1985-86-87… Where the idea to open up a shop came from I don’t remember but the time was right! We were selling very well in Spain, specially in Marbella, Ibiza and Barcelona. The thing is that these shops sold a few of our models, some over and over again…

like the “Saphir” sandal which was very popular in Marbella, Ibiza and Los Angeles, especially in Gold or silver leather, in all different heels, from high to flat. A real best-seller.

Summer collection…

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that in your own store you can do what you want and put a whole atmosphere there which is your own, display all the ideas you might have for all to see and eventually buy… and there it was: a telephone call from Madrid! A lovely young woman from Finland by the name of Taria who lived in Madrid and was the wife of Ivan, a very popular Spanish Pop star.

Tony, our favorite seamstress with a poster of Ivan which he signed for her.

She wanted to talk to us and propose something, very interesting. They came for a visit and we talked. She really wanted to put up a shop and sell all our things, which is great but I could not have her have all the say, so after negotiating back and forth we made a 50/50 deal.

Invitation for the opening of the shop…and what they wrote about it…

this picture was made in Madrid by Andre Rau for the STERN magazine…

This meant we each paid half of all the costs, lease, rent, bills, keeping up, sales salaries and stock and we shared the profits of the sales in the shop. We as manufacturers made the normal profits on what we sold to the store as we did by selling to other stores. Taria had quite a lot of freedom to order the models and colors she wanted which was not always the same as my own ideas but she was the person in the store and very dedicated and I even believe she found the shop which was an amazing deal in a district that was coming up as the Avant-garde fashion center of Madrid, it all is certainly “high end” there now! It was a sort of fallen down building, out of order and waiting to be torn down in that street named Piamonte. It had a marble front with a small but very chic window,

and a very nice door, the rest was a ruin but full of possibilities. Taria and I had slightly different taste so concessions had to be made, I particularly remember the floor because I wanted it to be wood but Taria wanted black stone which with our Kilims on top looked great and the store looked fabulous when we had finished with it. I even had a mirror put on one of the ceilings so you could see what the shoes on your feet looked like seen from above while sitting down.

The shop worked great, Taria was there every day and Alejandro moved from Elda to Madrid and worked in the shop which was very important because we could really trust his taste and he knew all about the fabrication as he already had worked with us for the past few years, he even had his own line and designs will.

Salvador made this gorgeous painting of me specially for the store, all in black and white except for the belt, bracelet and the blue shoes ( which you can’t see here).

Blue Jean collection

We were still living in Elda which was quite a way from Madrid, 4 hours by fast train, which was never fast but at times I went there to see how things were going and stayed with Alejandro in his flat or with our friend Sylvia Polakov, famous fashion photographer who has a wonderful place overlooking the “Retiro” park. Once the shop was working really well and we had a lot of interesting clients from the world of movies, fashion and music that visited our shop from everywhere and as far as from LA to Chile or Columbia, Holland, France or Africa, I introduced a small collection of clothes which was being produced in Madrid