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From a very young age, Laura Ponte (Vigo, 1973) designed clothes. “I made the first suit for an aunt of mine when I was 15,” she explains. In her house in Puerta de Hierro, now converted, she has been running a workshop for four years. custom sewing and jewelry for brides and guests.

If one does not know her project, it is easy to guess that Laura Ponte’s designs are elegant, something logical for a person with so much fashion culture. Have been international top model It sounds like this. But it is not easy to guess that her maternal grandfather was a tailor, and that clothes for her are not only the memory of how a very long Valentino dress she paraded around her hips, but much earlier, the feeling of the fabric between the fingers.

“Since we were little, we have made our own clothes. My grandfather had founded some clothing stores with a tailoring part, and I remember my family looking at the fabrics. There was a lot of fashion culture in the mining area. And everything was sold there, from clothing fabrics to an umbrella or a coat, in that area where there were almost no shops.”

Her mother really liked cinema and shared with her that love for those iconic images of women that appeared on the big screen. “Many times the things that attracted us as children are the things we have done in this life, right?”

The mirror house

“Now I am making custom wedding dresses,” she explains to MagasIN. “I have had a very curious professional life, but I still live with a kind of organized chaos, I never know what day it is and I never remember the years. “I count things differently,” she says.

She considers herself creative, at least from what she is told. “People say that I am very creative, I believe that everyone has creativity, it not only has to do with painting, it is a broader term. But yeah, my friends say I come up with ideas all the time.”

He is self-taught, clearly. “Without a filter, I vomit ideas. I function a lot in the immediate, acting on an object. There is a lot of talk nowadays about creativity, I don’t really know how to define it, I I think creative is better as an adjective.” .

She describes herself as a person with imagination and who solves things quickly, “I generate things, I come up with a lot of ideas, call it creative or restless.” In addition to his sewing work, she continues to be an image on occasion or supporting interesting initiatives. “Years ago I said that it was no longer my first intention, but if it is something very interesting, I accept.”

She has been painting for years, designing jewelry, and this has given her an immediate pulse of “what is cooking and moving, on an artistic level, how it communicates,…”. There are summers that he spends entire days drawing. More than observers, she says she needs accomplices, and more than drawing or painting static scenes, telling stories.

Water and cotton

What does Laura Ponte think about fashion? “I don’t believe half of the things, I don’t do styling or anything, but as an industry I still find it very interesting. “Sometimes I see things that I like and it gives me an interesting vibe about what is happening in society.” For her, “the image is very powerful, very convincing and very deceptive.”

And the clothes you make?

They are clothes that are commissioned from me, I like to work with each person, who has a character, who moves in a way… The wedding dress is something very specific anyway, it is about a certain day in which many times There is a family and social commitment, many ingredients to reconcile. It depends on where you marry, who, many people are involved in that process: it has a psychological part that attracts me a lot.

Do you enjoy that process of co-creation with each woman?

I love to beautify and I like to see each beautiful woman, bring out the best, what they perhaps had not thought about or did not dare to, due to complexes or wrong ideas, giving them confidence…

What are your clients like?

All types. When they come, I commit to doing something together. Sometimes, to do something, other times, to transform something, which may be less expensive, but more logical.

That will be less economically interesting as a businesswoman, right?

I’m not a great businessman, I’ve never liked numbers. I am very fair and it is difficult for me to generate and sell something that they do not need. I would live by bartering, the real value of things depends on needs.

Still, you are succeeding…

Let’s say I maintain a team, so that alone is doing well. I am happy and excited, I love the brides I work with and with whom a relationship is established, sometimes temporary and sometimes not. Now are complicated times…

You were successful in the past and you are successful again…

I ‘ve been very lucky. I earned a lot of money compared to people my age, but I’m not ambitious, I think money is not the most important thing every day.

“It depends on where you marry, on who, many people intervene in that process: it has a psychological part that attracts me a lot”

And what is important?

For me, for example, being calm, enjoying what you do and the people around you…

“It’s my own invention.”

What is your average day like?

I have a great time every day, no one takes me away from my sorrows, of course, but I am positive, and the truth is that I try to laugh a lot and have a good time whenever I can. I think I get excited very easily. My days are changing, sometimes new people come to tell me about their project and I love that.

Do you like talking to different people every day?

I love meeting people, but I have a very short memory, so I can’t gossip because of that.

What is the process you use to create the garments? I have read that you do it without a pattern, placing fabrics on top of the person.

I start from scratch, no one tries on something that’s hanging and I convince them that it’s great. We decide day by day what the dress will be like, I make it on them, things rest, I spend as much time as necessary with them going little by little. It is a very conscious process.

Something that repeats itself or that you tend to do?

No, each dress is different, of my own invention. Maybe I would like to do more different things, but I think people always put ideas together.

Do you promote these models of, let’s say, haute couture or artisans?

There are people who decide to publish it, many brides do not want to show it and that is respected, of course.

The non-memories

The most beautiful dress you’ve ever seen?

I am not a mythomaniac person, I have met very beautiful people, but I have seen clothes that did not correspond to the person, that they had to wear each other, something is not pretty if you are uncomfortable. On the other hand, after everything I’ve seen, I don’t remember anything, neither who nor where I saw it.

That is a symptom of good intelligence or self-absorption…

And this doesn’t just happen to me with fashion, with painting, for example, the same thing happens to me. I see things I like, but I don’t remember the name.

An infallible designer?

I assure you that I have worn wonderful clothes from many people, and from those same designers things that I did not like.

Is your role very different now, on the other side, and also being known?

Yes, it is very different. But think that for many people I am nobody. Girls who are not of my generation have no idea who I am. In any case, I think that the name is always associated with a character. There are people who call you because they like what you communicate… it depends.

What do you think about that, about fame?

When you are a name is when people who are 22 or 23 years old like you. Then I was another Laura because I had other fame outside of my work and now I am Laura Ponte again. There are brands that believe that I represent them in some way.

In what sense?

Maybe I like you because it seems like I’m easy to work with, I don’t cause many problems, I always warn you, and my agency knows this, that I’m a size 40-42, 48 years old, and I don’t make lingerie. In the photos they take of me, sometimes they remove my wrinkles and other times they don’t. I have not been afraid to be expressive, I do not think that expression takes away my little beauty. When I worked abroad they told me that I looked more like an actress than a model, but I honestly don’t understand what people’s concept of beauty is, what we have done so wrong that now there is this obsession of girls with filters: that pluperfect beauty is horrendous. .

So you don’t consider yourself to have a certain intensity?

I spend the day laughing, I swear, it’s my favorite thing in the world. I have been very shy and in my work that part of me has worked more. I don’t go to places and put myself in the center, but I laugh with people and I hate people who believe something with others.

However, there are very serious choices (like the wedding dress).

Look, a sense of humor is like air, we need it, and even more so in these times. I am very cheerful and rarely feel offended. I have looked at it a lot, I listen a lot and if I don’t let on much it is because of many things that have happened to me, with that exposure people create quick images of people.

What do you expect from 2022?

I live day to day and with my children, who have a very long life plan. Sometimes, I have to think as my mother says, that ‘you can’t live so day to day’, but the future is today. It is true that life compromises you in another way, but I have no plans, to be in good health and for my day to day to pass well… What an awful lot of horrible things happen and we see them with astonishing tranquility, don’t you think?

And with the education of your children?

Let them be done as they are, you cannot control it. I try to make them reflective, open, they have to do the same exercise that I do, but children have much healthier instincts, that they do not deform and that I do not deform them! We must care about others, especially in the society in which we live, and about the world around us, take care of it.

Who or what inspires you?

I have a lot of friends who surprise me in many ways, who are very close and who are anonymous. I am very impressed by people who take care of other people. I have a friend of mine named María Palacios who has a foundation, five children, the second with cerebral palsy and it is incredible what her children are like, what that family is like, how they have promoted an early care center… I am inspired by women who have families and children and who are generous and do anything for whoever. And it turns out that if you look a little, the world is full of women who are capable of taking care of their own things, that of others, and are in a good mood all the time. Those are the people I like, the group of women that surround me. I need by my side to have healthy and good energy, they are not lazy in life at all…

Reflections in front of the mirror

Any recent reflections that accompany you?

Before I was thinking again and I share it with you, that there are things from our selective memory that we must erase almost for mental health.

Do you mean tragic?

Look, I am surrounded by people with a lot of brains, with reflection and analysis and I have no memory… But lately, I also wonder in what healthy way we can remember things, what space we have to leave for the things that are really important and what things we have to forget every day.

A healing forgetfulness?

Health also has to do with how far we leave that margin of memory, so that it is indestructible and that what we remember no longer matters to us. What part of the memory do we have to preserve, that is the good one, that is present, and which one to control so that it does not harm us every day… A memory that allows us to breathe and work, and generate good things and be well.

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