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 of the heel 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 in Elda, 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 Montesinos trying out our first models…

Although Elda had everything a shoemaker needs, it was very basic and there was 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

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¨,( 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, Jose Garcia Lomas, 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, 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

   LOVE and PEACE

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, high heels 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….

LOVE and PEACE

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 and one different version. I did dozens of them, also 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…

LOVE and PEACE

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, see picture below…

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…

LOVE and PEACE

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

Wow, things are going good and time to open a shop! It had to be at walking distance from my place 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…

LOVE AND PEACE

 

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:

Emanuela Papatakis

Heidi Moravetz

Jacques de Bascher

Joan J.Buck

Loulou de La Falaise

Paloma Picasso

me

 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,

some pictures were taken for news papers… here in the elevator of our place,

and have to tell a lot more  but that is for the next post…

Its 1977 and I am 36 and Salvador became 29. 

This picture by Laurence Sackman in 1976 just for us with our own clothes…

I used to make or remake  blue Jeans and other pants for Salvador .…

oh, and don’t forget to check out Alegria’s blog to see what Salvador is doing…

LOVE AND PEACE

Being a model was great but I had and have many other interests and the modeling had become much less exciting for me, never worked with Helmut after he had a heart attack and now it had become like working for the money most of the time and doing jobs I was not really interested in.  It is hard to work with a photographer who shoots between 200 and 300 pictures for the same outfit and thought, because they booked me, they could make pictures like Helmut Newton. Also there were many new fresh beautiful faces around to fill the pages of the Fashion magazines and France is not that big to have a lot of work for all the models that were flocking to Paris. Everything changes and now I was doing more commercial jobs and mostly in Hamburg or Milan which meant a lot of flying and not being home much which I did not like and although the money was good that was not a good enough reason for me either. Loved to do the Fashion shows so I kept doing that still for years but slowly started to work less and think more of designing or making Fashion illustrations. Salvador was working very hard on his paintings and it was just so fantastic to be home and draw and sew. First I took a dress I had designed and made years earlier in Ibiza, remade it with material available in Paris and made pants to go with it and I got Pierre d’Albie, who had several shops that were doing great, have me make a small collection for him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

left Ibiza 1971… right the version for Pierre d’Albie 1975

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It lasted a while and he sold it well but I had to compromise, like putting his name in the garment, (which is actually very common) and they started to tell me what to do and there it gets difficult for me…

I rather imagined beautiful coats of silk and velvet

Lots of things were going on, Salvador was very inspired and was painting all the time,

whether people were there or not, and Alejandro was now in a very nice “Montessori” boarding school so we had to buy a car, which is a crazy thing in Paris where we were living, impossible to park even then, so much easier to take a taxi or a bus or even the metro. In any case the school was a bit outside of Paris in Meulem as I remember well and so every Monday morning and Friday afternoon we brought and took him there in our new green VW. In the meantime I divided my time between modeling, drawing and sewing and of course taking care of the house and everything that goes with it.

It was a very exciting time because of what Salvador was doing and you can see all of that HERE, click!

Here some pictures of my favourite models Apple and Alejandro

and I also made plenty of pictures of Salvador which again you can see on Alegria’s Blog and except for professional reasons, no one took a picture of me except the photo-booth near Place de Madeleine,which made very good pictures, personally some of my favourites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo booth 1975

We are still in 1975 here and I am 34 and very conscious that life is full of choices one has to make, and the trick is to make the right one so as far as I am concerned I follow my heart and try to be true to myself, but who am I and what do I want?? For me that is the question worth investigating and takes a lifetime and for what? For me to be at Peace, because being at Peace will allow me to feel free, free from all the burdens that I accumulated in my head as well as the material ones. I am at a point where less is more and realise that I need little to posses, my eyes can take in everything that gives me joy and inspiration and just a flower can lift my spirits and of course I love beautiful things but prefer to create them…

yes, life is a trip…

Don’t forget to check Alegria’s BLOG with Salvador’s story
LOVE and PEACE