It has an iron bookcase that measures three by three. It's like a mechanic. He has traveled from Barcelona to Tangier, he spent eight years there, then moved to the Empordà. And now she is on her way to Asturias, to a house facing the sea, where the designer Teresa Helbig hopes to assemble it for the last time. “We are climate migrants,” she smiles. The books that have remained in the Eixample do not stop. They literally go from top to bottom. And from the showroom and the atelier, they go back up to the reading corner, next to his desk and a window that overlooks a large block patio, in a modernist apartment where the Yorkshire Mick and Jack Russell Jagger run around.
Books nurture the irreplaceable team of the Helbig house. There are photography, architecture, art, fashion. They do not remain in a library, but instead configure themselves a changing and moving furniture, in which nothing is planned and everything is at hand. On a column of books next to the dining room door – where a splendid Delfi table by Marcel Breuer and Carlo Scarpa catches the eye – there is a Van der Straeten lamp. Others are stacked around two armchairs by Le Corbusier and a Cesca chair in which "Teresa madre, la jefaza" will sit. The dressmaker Teresa Blasco was Helbig's first teacher. She taught him that a great dress needs time, and that excellence is in what is not seen; in the seams more than in the patterns. Which is also attributable to editing.
He says of his father that he carries a construction palette inside, and the perception that things are never finished; he inherited his passion for geometry. And from both he acquired patience, respect for the pause to observe, review, care; the taste for a job well done. It is no coincidence that he gives away so much fair fashion. An invitation to dress ethically, by Marta D. Riezu. From the same author I see Water and soap. Notes on involuntary elegance, in Newfoundland edition.
For more than twenty-five years, Teresa Helbig's pieces have graced countless catwalks and red (or champagne-colored, as at the last Oscars) carpets. And although books are increasingly dispensable in her profession, she is a romantic, a lover of photography and paper. No one takes away the pleasure of turning pages and dwelling on the details. For example, to observe the materials and marbles that the stairs in Milan are made of, selected by Karl Kolbitz; or Japanese fabrics; or the work of Pierre et Gilles; or the portraits of Snapshots of Dangerous Women, by Peter J. Cohen.
Many have bought them on their travels. So he goes hunting: "I am the least oriented person in the world, but I always find the fashionable neighborhood." The rush of the moment makes her come back loaded with billets that she could have ordered from here; she came from Paris with enormous volumes by Bruce Weber, Coco Chanel or Tim Walker. He likes unique looks, personal proposals. She experienced Stendhal syndrome at an Alexander McQueen exhibition at the V
She reads mostly on weekends, while drinking green tea, and every morning the press with her husband, Chema Paré. Zero fiction. Yes, biographies – “I'm a gossip”, he laughs – by Karl Lagerfeld, by Yves Saint Laurent. She doesn't read as much as she would like, because of the series and because she is one of those who still go to the movies. And because the city does not run out. Perhaps, in her 'slow' upbringing, she contributed to the booklet collection The World of Animals, when she was little. Each one was worth about twenty-five pesetas. They were sold on a weekly basis, so you had to wait. In the end, they were bound in green and gold; she couldn't stand the tome dedicated to reptiles. She keeps them in a Louis Vuitton suitcase that she uses as a nightstand.
