IN 1993, on my birthday April 1, Salvador and I got married after being together for 25 years. The idea came really from Nancy (Mehagian), she knew Marshal Ho who was a Tai-Chi master a.o. things, (we used to go do Tai-Chi in the park where he was teaching on certain days) but he was also a legal minister- and so that is how it happened.

A TAO ceremony in the most beautiful Cathedral “The Park” in spring, in the “City of Angels”, on a gorgeous day.

It was a great ceremony and great to have our friends around to share that special time.

Armen, Salvador, me, Alegria, Nancy and Marshal Ho

The Incense, part of the ceremony sharing here with friends of which some had come from Amsterdam or Paris and you can see Paula Abdul there and the lovely actress Betsy Palmer ( we were staying in her beautiful property for a while)….

Friends, Coco and Peter Conn, had opened their house to us and all our friends. Their house was near the park so it was easy for the guests to get there and so after the ceremony we all went there to celebrate and have dinner…. And what a dinner it was, not just any dinner but great specialties of “Nancy the amazing cook“, assisted by her friend (who was then the cook of Kevin Costner) and the overlooking eye of Nancy’s mom, also an incredible cook. They started the day before and they cooked for hours on end but for everyone who was there, it certainly was an unforgettable feast.

The next big thing that really shook us was the Northridge Earthquake of 1994. I had just that evening come back from a trip to Madrid and after celebrating  till around 3 I fell asleep totally exhausted to be woken up a little later by an incredible sound of rumbling and it came more near and louder and yes, wow, the house was shaken like a toy. We usually sleep on a futon on the floor and I had pain in all my bones for weeks because of the shaking, a painting fell on our head and you have no time to think… Alegria had a friend staying with her in her room and they came running pale and shocked into our bedroom…. the sound was really very impressing. The house we were living in was made mostly of glass, a beautiful  60-ties House designed by a known architect and the sound of all that glass windows breaking, plus all the bottles in the kitchen where wine and olive oil were mixing on the floor… it was incredible and yes, I was very scared! A little later when the sun came up we got the courage to go to the street and have a look. Ventura Blvd had lots of people standing in the middle of the road in pajamas and with bags, shop windows were shattered and fires were going on nearby…

 house made of glass..

The aftershocks were so big that I saw the water in the pool go up like an enormous wave and fall back in…

After all that excitement came the truth, the house was inspected and declared “dangerous” because she had moved from her foundation and so the owners decided to sell rather then restore. We did find a buyer for them but we could stay still for months.
Salvador went to Canary Islands to prepare an exhibition ( read here all about it) and me with my friends Susan Bottomly and Dr. Patricia Snyder set up a company and we started to sell the crosses I was making. In Spain I had started to make jewelry of plexiglass, love that material, so much to do with it and the colors so beautiful.

mostly crosses and now I was also making crosses of Fimo clay, stuff you bake in the oven. I was making them, Susan, who knew everybody, was selling and Patricia was doing the marketing and so on.

                                        me and Susan          ( pic. salvador

Some of the jewelry went to interesting people and the magazines were ready but we could not do it without investment.. we tried and we worked very hard but it was not to be, too complicated! Susan moved to Hawaii and when Salvador came back from Spain, we moved to downtown LA and I started to design for BCBG…

LOVE and PEACE 

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

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

                                                                                                   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

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

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

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

wish I had all these now

… or these..

or any of these…

My very favorite

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

The hairy shoe

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

idea for the shop window Puerta de Toledo.

designing shoes

designing clothes

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

and so things were going and moving and changing…

LOVE and PEACE

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

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

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

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

So finally… our shop in Puerta de Toledo

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

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

                                           LOVE AND PEACE

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