Eduardo Verbo
Updated Sunday, March 10, 2024-02:10
Fashion The museum project dedicated to Manuel Pertegaz in Teruel is in danger
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The creaking of the modernist doors of the salons at number 490 Diagonal Avenue.
The rustle of silk, organza and tulle dresses.
The reliefs of the jewel buttons on the coats.
The visits of the clients with their swan incarnations in tow: Alinne Griffith, Countess of Romanones, the rich heiress Carmen Mateu de Suqué or
her muse par excellence, Bibis Salisachs de Samaranch.
The great actresses of Hollywood at her feet.
Ava Gardner feeding him.
The dress of the future queen of Spain as the finishing touch to a tremendous career.
Gold needles and thimbles.
A lost universe.
The couturier Manuel Pertegaz, whose death ten years ago will be commemorated on August 30, fulfilled all his dreams.
Well, almost all of them.
He resisted having his faithful squire, Antonio Mesa Poyatos from Granada, become the successor of his vast legacy, a brand that today no longer has Jorge Vázquez as creative director and has taken a new direction. as a party collection.
"My husband was born in Guadix (Granada) in 1941 and came to Barcelona as a teenager. He was in love with fabrics and worked as an assistant in an embroidery house. Manolo's brother-in-law, Paco Caus, married to his only sister, went there. Encarna, who introduced him to him. He was studying Art at the Massana School in Barcelona, but it was little, because Pertegaz told him: "I need you here!
Think that if I had studied dressmaking, I swear I wouldn't be who I am.
If you go, they will take away your ideas."
She liked the touch of modernity that my husband brought to the drawings of his designs. On one occasion she even commented to him:
"The student surpasses the teacher," proudly recalls María Luisa Cabido,
hairdresser and widow. de Mesa, who died in 2020 at the age of 79, in conversation with LOC.
Pertegaz with his niece Sionín and Antonio Mesa Poyatos (right of the image)Courted
Everything was going well.
Together they exported Spanish sewing around the world.
It was the 60s. Mesa remembered the hectic 18-hour days and some special projects: like when, together with the teacher, he designed the wedding dress for his future wife.
"I wasn't worried about them seeing it before. I preferred them to do it. It was beautiful.
Very simple and then I wore it to go to a party and to the Lyceum. I met Antonio when I was leaving a shoe store. He was going in and I was going out. Then , I met him another day. It turns out that he was the cousin of my sister's boyfriend. It took us nine years to get married. Pertegaz was our godfather, even though I had my father. And he was also, along with his niece Sionín Caus [ died in 2022], of our only daughter, Sol," continues Mesa's widow.
However, Antonio's headaches were becoming more and more distressing.
In 2004, Pertegaz himself
recalled in an interview that "a sinus operation caused him to lose his sight."
The worst of tragedies for an artist whose eyes and hands are his tools.
"He actually had sinusitis, but the doctor insisted that it was the trigeminal. He was in the hospital for a few days and they operated on him almost while he was in a coma. My husband never cursed the doctor who was wrong about him, just as I have remembered his family from the beginning that made the earth," continues María Luisa.
Antonio had to leave the workshop.
"It was very sad. Pertegaz was good to him and they never stopped talking.
In fact, some afternoons he spent a good time on the phone. I remember that Manolo made my daughter's wedding dress and he was telling Antonio about the process." .
The couple left their beautiful penthouse in Barcelona and settled in Alicante.
Mesa knew how to turn what happened and continued creating art.
"He lost his sight, but he didn't go completely blind. I don't like that word, because he defended himself: he walked calmly without crashing, he shaved, he went alone to the cafeteria and, for example, he never used a cane. I rebel against that. "When I see an ONCE salesperson and I know that he sees a little, I raise my hand and we high-five him. For me, that man is not completely blind."
Manuel Pertegaz with a doll dressed in one of his designs.EFE
He turned to his initial passion for drawing.
"His works of mirrors and nails were very famous. They were bought by Alain Delon and Frank Sinatra, thanks to the famous gallery owner Carmina Maceín, who was the dealer between Franco and Picasso, who did not speak to each other. In fact, they were going to have an exhibition in singer's house, but in the end it was not possible.
Pertegaz also had them displayed in its farmhouse in Pineda de Mar
and, therefore, Rocío Dúrcal and Junior or Inmaculada de Borbón-Dos Sicilias and Miguel García de Sáez were also clients," María lists Louise.
In fact, the pieces dot the walls of some illustrious art galleries and appear in the collections of the Typhlological Museum of Madrid, where they say: "Her work is based on a need for communication and aims to achieve aesthetic beauty."
Speaking of museums, these days the possible construction of one in honor of Pertegaz in Teruel is being debated.
Antonio Mesa was never a melancholic man.
"Our favorite plan was to go to Muchamiel, in Alicante. There we had ham for breakfast that was cut the way he wanted. And he loved walking through the market. He became a country man. He told me: "I have
never been as happy as here. with you."
Despite having met Marisa Berenson and having lived in that fascinating world? Of course! He answered me," concludes his widow.
The poet May Sarton confesses in her "Diary of a Solitude" that "nothing comes to life without darkness, just as nothing flourishes without light."
Paraphrasing Borges, perhaps the history of fashion is also the history of a few metaphors.