It has an iron shelf that is three meters by three. It's like a mechanic. He traveled from Barcelona to Tangier, where he spent eight years, then moved to the Empordà. And now it's off to Asturias, to a house by the sea, where designer Teresa Helbig hopes to assemble it one last time. "We are climate migrants", he smiles. The books that have stayed 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 island patio, in a modernist floor where Yorkshire Mick and Jack Russell Jagger run.
Books nourish the irreplaceable team of the Helbig house. There is photography, architecture, art, fashion. They do not remain in a library, but configure for themselves a changing and moving furniture in which nothing is planned, and everything is left to hand. Above a column of books next to the door to the dining room - where a splendid Delphi table by Marcel Breuer and Carlo Scarpa catches the eye - there is a Van der Straeten lamp. Others are piled around two armchairs by Le Corbusier and a Cesca chair on which "Teresa mare, la jefaza" will sit. Dressmaker Teresa Blasco was Helbig's first teacher. He taught her that a great dress needs time, and that excellence lies in what is not seen; it's in the seams rather than the patterns. This is also attributable to the editing.
Of his father he says that he carries inside a construction mason, and the perception that things are never finished; he inherited his passion for geometry and attention to joints. And from both, patience, respect for the pause aimed at observing, reviewing, the taste for a job well done. It is no coincidence that La moda justa often gives away. An invitation to dress ethically, by Marta D. Riezu. From the same author I see Agua y jabón. Notes on involuntary elegance, in the Terranova edition.
For more than twenty-five years, Teresa Helbig's pieces have shone on many catwalks and red carpets (or champagne-colored, in the case of the last Oscars). And despite the fact that books are increasingly indispensable in her profession, she is a romantic, lover of photography and paper. No one takes away the pleasure of turning pages and stopping at the details. For example, to admire the materials and marbles of which the Milan stairs are made, 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.
He has bought many on his travels. Then he goes hunting: "I'm the least oriented person in the world, but I always find the trendy neighborhood." The excitement of the moment makes her return loaded with ingots that she could have ordered from here; came from Paris with huge volumes of Bruce Weber, Coco Chanel or Tim Walker. He likes unique looks, personal proposals. He experienced the 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”, she laughs – of Karl Lagerfeld, of Yves Saint Laurent. He doesn't read as much as he would like, because of the series and because he is one of those who still go to the cinema. And because the city never ends, he always has plans. Perhaps, in her slow education, the fascicle collection El mundo de los animales, when she was little, contributed. Each of them was worth about twenty-five pesetas, and they were sold with a weekly frequency, so you had to wait to read them. At the end, they bound them in green, black and gold; she couldn't stand the tome devoted to reptiles. He keeps them in a Louis Vuitton suitcase that doubles as a bedside table.
