“I’m one of the most nostalgic people you’ll ever meet” – This is the phrase I repeat most often to new acquaintances. I believe it serves as a good preface for understanding my way of being, my stories. Nice to meet you, my name is Maria Helena, I’m a lawyer who gave it all up to create a company focused on photo albums, to tell stories through them.
Paper, photo, print, touch, physical, history… Yes, nostalgic seems to be quite accurate. I’ve been like this since I was very young, long before I was able to perceive this characteristic in myself, which, in my opinion, comes from my family. I grew up in a house where history was the protagonist; I listened to my father tell the story of our family, of my childhood and my siblings, all perfectly documented by him in albums. I loved hearing the stories about the time he lived in Paris and, long before I knew the City of Lights, I was already traveling in my own imagination.
My grandmother, who had the privilege of traveling the world extensively and, throughout these travels, collecting incredible pieces, also told me, and still tells me, many other stories. For most of them, she still has all the pieces that starred in them. “I wore this Givenchy dress to a dinner hosted by Salvador Dalí.” For someone who loves to hear a story, it’s a journey through time and one of the most real ones.
My mother, in my opinion, has an unparalleled sense of style, and she also loves to tell stories and, luckily for me, she lived long enough to write a best-selling novel. One of my favorites is the one about when she went to Europe to try to make it as a model, at a time when Brazilian women didn’t walk on runways abroad, and after seeing a dress in a store window, she was sure “with this one I will be able to be cast for the haute couture shows”. It turns out that the dress was “just” a jaw-dropping Azzedine Alaïa, a brand she, young and of simple origin, did not yet know. A small obstacle was the fact that it cost exactly what she had taken to spend a month there. She bought it. Whether it was the dress or not we will never know, but the fact is that, after that, she was cast for the Chanel, Paco Rabanne runway, among other equally prestigious brands, having even been a direct fitting model for none other than Mr. Lagerfeld.
The Alaïa dress now lives in a box kept under lock and key, a piece she guards like a jewel, it’s a portal in time for her. And why am I telling you all this? So that you can understand that that statement that opened this text is not without reason. I am an aesthetic person but, before that, I am a person who appreciates and seeks to know the history of things. And a large part of the charm I see in places, people, and objects comes from these stories. When I don’t find them, interest quickly fades. Once I went with my family to Nantes, northern France, where we rented a house. Throughout the rooms, the house was full of objects, knick-knacks, and over the days, through misaligned, crooked, and sometimes chipped objects, I was discovering more and more about that family. I left there convinced that this was what I liked: a house that tells a story.
In 2008, I had the opportunity to live in Paris for a few months and, after that, there were several visits to the city. It didn’t take long for me to quickly become enchanted by the style of French women. Years later, I discovered that it enchants women all over the world. They’re not put together, they hardly wear makeup, their hair sometimes seems like it hasn’t been combed in days, expression lines here, a wrinkle there, French women celebrate imperfection, the natural, experience, history. They are like a human version of that house I stayed in with my family in Nantes. Marks, signs, particularities could be seen by most as imperfections but, for me, and especially for them, it was their life story. I didn’t know the owners of the house in Nantes but I imagine they think the same way.
I don’t like perfect things, but when I see a bag, a suitcase, a loafer with signs of wear, or paintings, photo frames, and knick-knacks hanging crookedly, my head goes into a loop of narratives and a desire to add to my own.
Going back to French women, the same naturalness with which they deal with the body and aesthetics translates very coherently with their own style. They are not susceptible to fads, they dispense any item that carries the prefix “it”. Like an “it” bag, shoe, hair, appelez ça comme vous voulez), and they privilege special pieces, with history, preferably with affection.
This is a woman who is far from being just another victim of fashion. She knows what is trendy, but she creates her own style, without losing sight of what denotes personality and also a concern for the timeless. After all, this woman we’re talking about doesn’t live in a dream world, on the contrary, she is aware of everything around her, of what is important, feet firmly on the ground, with beautiful shoes, évidemment. Therefore, it is not surprising that French women are masters in the art of hunting for good vintages.
This woman reminds me a lot of my grandmother, my mother, my father, the environment in which I grew up, where things were not acquired or discarded lightly, where what you have is preserved, after all, as the saying goes, a stitch in time saves nine. In my case, thanks to my grandmother, I now have an Hermès bag that is over 60 years old and draws sighs from Maison employees because it is a model that no longer exists. What I like most about this bag is not the fact that practically no one else has it, although I think that’s very cool, but knowing that I’m carrying a piece with a history, of Hermès itself, of my grandmother, and, today, creating my own.
It was seeing my mother, father, and grandmother take such good care of their things and preserve them for years, even with imperfections, that I myself began to value that, both inside and outside the home. I say outside the home because in recent years when I want to buy something, I value pieces with history, but they don’t have to be mine or my family’s.
I like to research the second-hand and vintage market and find special pieces. Whenever I find something, I’m overcome by a good feeling of acquiring something that has life, history, even if I don’t know them. The good feeling also comes from the fact that, by acquiring something that has been circulating on the market for a while, I’m somehow doing my part to not overburden the planet. Of course, I also love knowing that the chance of having someone in the same place as me, with the same piece, is almost nil.
In addition, I receive these pieces and their imperfections with the greatest pleasure, they are the marks that denote stories, maturity and inspire me to think about what they have lived through to get to my hands.
The opposite of this doesn’t appeal to me very much. I don’t like perfect things, but when I see a bag, a suitcase, a loafer with signs of wear, or paintings, photo frames, and knick-knacks hanging crookedly, my head goes into a loop of narratives and a desire to add to my own.
That’s how I feel every time I see my mother’s Alaïa dress, even though she’s not ready to let it live new stories with me yet. But, that’s the thing, everything in its own time. In the meantime, I’ll be having fun, adding my own stories to other people’s pieces, and, of course, putting my own pieces out into the world so that they can live new narratives too.
Oh! Grandma is 103 years old (and counting!) and is ecstatic to see me living with her pieces!
With affection,
Maria Helena.
