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Mari Rodríguez Ichaso remembers her friend Oscar de la Renta 6 years after his death.
Look in this gallery for some images captured by the legendary designer's columnist.
(Photo: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso)
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"Today, remembering him with joy, I would like to share with you some memories about him, whose name became a brand of beauty and luxury - whose personality and charm will always be present in those of us who knew him," writes the columnist.
(Photo: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso)
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The Dominican designer Oscar de la Renta was born in 1932 in Santo Domingo.
In this photo he checks an embroidery (Photo: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso)
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The Dominican designer had his life in three very different places: a bucolic farm in the middle of green hills in Kent, in the state of Connecticut;
a beach house in Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic;
and a sumptuous, baroque apartment on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
In this photo he poses in Kent.
(Photo: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso)
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If there were an “aristocracy” in the world of fashion, Óscar de la Renta would have been, at least, a great prince ... Or a formidable emperor, writes Mari Rodríguez Ichaso (Photo: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso)
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De la Renta with his dogs.
(Photo: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso)
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Editor's Note:
Mari Rodríguez Ichaso has been a contributor to Vanidades magazine for several decades.
Specialist in fashion, travel, gastronomy, art, architecture and entertainment.
Film producer.
Style columnist for CNN en Español.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely his own.
Read more opinion pieces at cnne.com/opinion
(CNN Spanish) -
If there was an "aristocracy" in the world of fashion, Oscar de la Renta would have been, at least, a great prince ... Or a formidable emperor.
That was how special this man was, who for many years I could call my good friend!
October marked the 7th anniversary of his death.
That was a blow to the world of fashion.
It was news that resonated.
And today, remembering him with joy, I would like to share with you some memories about him, whose name became a brand of beauty and luxury - whose personality and charm will always be present in those of us who knew him.
And by the way, I had the joy of having introduced him one night, at the famous Regine's nightclub in New York, to my also good friend Julio Iglesias, who became his great accomplice in life.
The life of Óscar de la Renta was always a collage of places and people as fascinating as his creations.
Well, he was not only a successful Latin American in fashion, but also a cultured man with friends from all over the world, such as Julio Iglesias, Henry Kissinger, the Rothschilds, the Agnelli, the Astors ...
In addition, as a best friend he had his wife Annette de la Renta, "with whom you can talk about everything you can think of and she is a brilliant woman."
Don't you love when a man talks like that about his wife?
It was precisely that continuous conversation, full of curiosity and true empathy for his interlocutor, that made Oscar an irresistible man.
He was interested in everything and had a great joie de vivre.
The phrase joie de vivre seemed made for him!
The Dominican designer had his life in three very different places: a bucolic farm in the middle of green hills in Kent, in the state of Connecticut;
a beach house in Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic;
and a sumptuous, baroque apartment on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
In each of these places, he was not only surrounded by important furniture and valuable paintings, but always managed to create an extraordinary personal “habitat”.
It was a world full of beauty, where he lived an existence that there is no choice but to call "exquisite".
The spirit of the most modern "chic" exists, hand in hand, with the designer's Latin heritage.
The combination is, without a doubt, fabulous and at the same time very “cool”.
Oscar had a long and successful career.
His designs, created "to beautify women", were the favorites of personalities such as Sharon Stone, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones or Sarah Jessica Parker, who adored his clothes and perfumes ... And the very seductive Oscar!
Who was Oscar de la Renta?
I remember sitting having lunch on his farm in Connecticut - where in a golf cart he proudly showed me his huge garden - and suddenly hearing him say:
“If he hadn't been a designer, he would have been a gardener.
You do not know the joy that it gives me to see the flowers and plants grow, and with my own hands remove the dead leaves ... And in that corner of the garden that I showed you is where I would like to be buried the day I die.
Annette and I chose it. "
I remember telling him that few know that another of his passions was nature.
“Taking care of the garden has become my passion.
It is something very creative and another way of playing with shapes and color.
I like to be alone and work the land with my own hands, as one begins to feel a new balance with nature and with oneself.
Watching plants grow is a very spiritual experience, just like the renewal of the seasons.
We also have a vegetable garden where we grow asparagus, potatoes, all kinds of lettuces and some fantastic tomatoes ... For Annette, and for me, this is the place where we rejuvenate our spirit day by day ”.
She also explained where she felt most “at home,” which I loved.
“The United States, a country to which I am enormously grateful, is without a doubt 'my home'.
New York is the city that has given me the triumph.
There you can see first-hand the great generosity of the Americans.
It is an extraordinary, glamorous city full of contrasts.
But later I recharge my energies in Santo Domingo, a true paradise, and in Connecticut.
They are my three 'homes', where I laugh, relax, have fun and dance.
Because I love to sing and dance, like a good Latino at last.
And in the United States I never dance because my wife hates dancing, but I do it when I go to Santo Domingo ”.
The role of women in their designs
It is well known that the woman who wears a design by Óscar de la Renta (both before and now with the new designers Fernando García and Laura Kim, who were his assistants) feels beautiful, seductive and feminine.
"To make them 100% irresistible is my wish", was the favorite phrase of Oscar, who was a scholar and philosopher of fashion.
For Óscar, the 21st century is the century of women.
This is how he once told me:
“Both the professional and the one who works at home, is a modern woman, with many interests in life, who knows who she is and what she wants.
And it is for that woman that I admire who I design.
Fashion has never been more exciting, precisely because there has never been a woman who controls her destiny like the woman of today, who no longer has to dress in men's fashion, almost in men's suits, to be respected and respected. consider in the professional world.
You no longer have to imitate men to be part of the business world! "
And he added: “It's nice to see professionals who want to look pretty and feminine.
Mari, the world of today also enchants me for the sincerity that exists.
If a woman likes a man, she can ask him to go out with her, to dinner or a drink.
It is something that no longer looks bad, because the woman is not only the 'seduced', but she is allowed to be the 'seducer' ”.
Bravo!
I love that these phrases have come from a Latin man, very modern, intelligent, far from absurd machismo!
Didn't I tell you that Oscar de la Renta was "out of the box"?
Your vision of fashion
What makes fashion?
To whom?
How do you reflect the Latin in your designs?
Those questions I asked him once.
"Fashion is always youth oriented.
It started in the late 60s with the Beatles, model Twiggy and the flower children who revolutionized everything.
In the 1950s, women imitated the dress of film artists.
In the early 1960s they wanted to imitate the "socialites" like Jackie Kennedy.
Now fashion is born from the street.
And the superstars that everyone wants to imitate are the models, the singers, so fashion is young and not at all elitist, nor snobbish ”.
And he explained to me how it reflects his Latino vision:
“What is Latin in me is reflected in my taste for color, for the energy of my designs.
Everyone knows that my clothes have embroidery, ruffles and a wealth of details and materials that accentuate the beauty of the woman who wears them.
I don't like minimalism or boring clothes! "
"You've always told me that the perfumes you create come from your memories."
Tell me how, I asked him once.
—The memories of when we are little mark us very deeply, and especially the smells.
The smell of the gardens of my childhood inspired my perfumes years later.
They were fragrant gardens, full of color and sunshine.
And that's why I always say that I couldn't live without the sun!
It was the search for a fragrance that I always felt when I crossed a park near the house, every time I went to look for something that my mother had asked me for.
And that years later I discovered that it was a perfume called "Ylang ylang"!
Just as I loved the perfume of the "galán de noche", which at night was so intense.
All these memories come back to you and have helped me create fragrances.
His life
The life of Óscar de la Renta was a fascinating journey, which began on July 22, 1932 in Santo Domingo. He got a second start when at 18 he moved to Madrid to study painting. And he experienced a third and sensational stage when he began living in New York, in 1963.
“My father had an insurance company, but since my mother's brother was one of the most important poets in Santo Domingo, and some of my aunts painted, I was always drawn to painting and the arts.
And I didn't see myself selling insurance or collecting policies!
Since I was a child I knew what I wanted to do, but if I had told my father that I wanted to be a painter, he would have had a heart attack, because I was the only male child among 6 daughters;
And, of course, he wanted me to work in his business.
But I was lucky that my mother always supported me in my dreams and eventually we were able to convince my father that at only 15 years old he would send me to the National School of Fine Arts in Santo Domingo ”.
He related more to me.
“As I had not finished my secondary studies, I continued studying high school, in addition to attending art school, so I spent more than 12 hours a day studying. I wanted to prove to my father how serious I was about painting. So I also learned to be much more disciplined. And when I graduated I was able to go to Madrid to continue studying painting at the Real Academia de San Fernando ”.
And it was in Spain that, out of sheer necessity, De la Renta began his association with clothing design, as his mother had died and his father began asking his only son to return to Santo Domingo and start working on something practical.
"I was very impressed with the elegant women that I saw in Madrid and soon I began to work doing illustrations of fashion designs." One such design was seen in 1956 by the wife of John Lodge, the United States ambassador to Spain, who asked the young De la Renta to design a dress for her daughter Beatriz's debutante party in Madrid.
The model drew so much attention that a photo of the Lodge's daughter, wearing the beautiful white ruffled and lace dress, appeared on the cover of Life magazine, making the name of Oscar de la Renta known overnight. morning!
It was a stroke of luck —or one of those mysterious twists of fate— but it helped De la Renta start working as an assistant at Eisa, the design house of Cristóbal Balenciaga, the Spaniard who in the decades of the 50s and the 60 was one of the geniuses of international haute couture.
After the valuable apprenticeship with Balenciaga, De la Renta decided to go to Paris, where in 1961 he began working as an assistant to Antonio Castillo, at the famous Lanvin-Castillo firm.
“When I arrived in Paris I did not speak French and I thought that trying to work with a designer who spoke Spanish was the best thing for me.
And although I was doing fashion in Madrid and Paris, I never stopped painting because I continued with the illusion of being a painter and making it my career ”.
But fashion won the battle.
Two years later, in 1963, De la Renta was hired by Elizabeth Arden and moved to New York to design the couture and ready-to-wear for the important boutique, later moving to the fashion house of Jane Derby. .
In 1965, after living in the United States for two years, she began designing under her own name and established her fashion house.
The rest is history!
De la Renta married Françoise de Langlade, who was editor of Vogue magazine in France, in 1967.
But he was widowed in 1983.
He married again, in 1989, to Annette Engelhard Reed, a very private American heiress, divorced and mother of 3 children, whom I admire.
For Óscar, “family is the key to life”, because as the only boy among six sisters, he enjoyed a very happy childhood and adolescence.
He also had a very supportive and pampering mother.
"I am very sorry that I was not able to live to see and enjoy my triumph."
Óscar de la Renta not only designed clothes, bags, shoes, perfumes or furniture, but his life encompassed all kinds of interests.
His humanitarian side was highly admired.
For example, he made donations to El Hogar del Niño, which he founded in Santo Domingo and where he adopted his son Moisés de la Renta, who is now an adult, a few months after he was born.
He also contributed to Unicef.
The good character and simplicity of Óscar de la Renta were two of his recognized characteristics in the fashion industry.
I don't know if being Latino —and especially Caribbean, where we are very open and happy people— had to do with it.
However, her personal history defined her character, as did her desire to do new things related to everything that represents beauty, be it fashion, architecture or the arts.
Oscar died of Hodgkin's lymphoma on October 20, 2014, at the age of 82.