I was four years old. She was wearing a navy blue dress with a huge white silk bow tied at the waist. Made by her mother. His father's favorite. With a pair of matching bows in her hair, she was waiting for him to return to her house so he could take her for a walk. But her father never returned and her premature death marked the life of little Marta Rota, to the point that she decided to grow up quickly. “I wanted to help at home, I hardly had the feeling of being a girl,” she remembers. And she grew so fast that at the age of fifteen she came up with her first fashion collection and at 16 she founded her own brand, Tot-Hom.
Now, at 70 years old, having passed the golden wedding with haute couture and with more than 40,000 dresses designed, she has just published The Applause of the Fairies, a book of memories in which she especially recounts her almost innate passion for fashion, her beginnings as a designer and endless vivid anecdotes. But, above all, her writing has served her to “do a little therapy,” she confesses, sitting in front of a decorative fireplace that beautifies one of the rooms of the store on Balmes Street in Barcelona. Elegant costumes from her imagination surround her.
“My life has been so crazy that I have never had time to listen to myself,” she continues. Added to the absence of her father was that of her mother, who spent almost all day on her own haute couture brand, Margarita Jovani, with which she supported the family and dressed the wealthiest bourgeoisie in the city. . “I needed to get her attention and maybe that's why I ended up in her workshop when I was very young, although I already knew what I wanted to do,” she says. “It was so clear to me that my mother didn't dare to tell me no, and now if someone who was 16 years old told me that they had her own brand, I wouldn't believe it, they would have to prove it to me.”
Hers, Tot-Hom, was born in as much of a hurry as she was when she was growing up, to the point that the name had to be thought about hours before printing the invitations for her first show. Her mother always said: “Tothomté dret a ser guapo” (everyone has the right to be handsome). And from there not only did Tot-Hom come out, but the phrase became its leitmotiv. “Everyone is groomed and being well dressed gives you confidence, and that is what I try to offer my clients because fashion also works as therapy,” she says.
“Tot-Hom is not a name that I love, but I have gotten used to it and it is what it is,” reveals who assures that he does not regret anything. Not even the famous dress that he created for Cristina Pedroche to present the 2019 chimes, pointed out as possible plagiarism. “It was horrible, horrible,” she emphasizes. “When I saw the one that had been bundled, I almost died because people said it was a copy and it wasn't, although it did look like one,” she admits. “Pedroche wanted a bikini and I thought about making him one with flowers. Maybe I had in my retina the one that Laetitia Casta had worn, but at that moment I didn't think about it,” she confesses. “But it's over, I don't care and it was funny.” Would he repeat the experience? “They have already proposed it to me, but no, no. Once and that's enough,” she laughs.
Isabel Preysler was one of the first celebrities to knock on his door. Then many others came, especially when he decided to open a store on Velázquez Street in Madrid in 2001. His list of clients includes Naty Abascal, Rossy de Palma, Nieves Álvarez and Ana Belén, who commissioned him to create the costumes for the tour The taste is ours. . “When I started in Madrid, there were more differences with Barcelona in terms of fashion than now. I learned then that colors are also flattering, not just beige, gray or black, and that people dress up much more in Madrid, while in Barcelona we sometimes err on the side of not doing so,” she analyzes. “I still think that Barcelona is Europe and that now Madrid is going out of its way, it is a totally cosmopolitan city,” compares the designer, who takes the Ave every Thursday to serve her clients on the exclusive Madrid street.
“The mission of haute couture is to make anyone's fantasies come true,” he insists in his book, whose title refers to those applause that Tinkerbell needed to live. “Without fashion I don't know what my life would have been like, because it has saved me,” she reflects. And although when she was little she did not do like Peter Pan, she did not want to grow up, now Marta Rota would like to stop time. “With three grandchildren, two daughters, a wonderful husband and a business that excites me, I wish she could stop it. I enjoy what I do, I have a blast,” so she doesn't even think about retiring, but “over time, delegate it to my daughters.” Both Alejandra and Andrea participate in the family business, which has grown to the point of having stores in Japan and Greece. “I don't think about how old I am, I just don't believe it,” exclaims Rota. “But I have it, and what I have lived, lived.” Which is not little.
