Telva Pedro Monjardín: the most refined man in Spain

"It is not the suit but the way of wearing it, it is not so much the cloth as the spirit of the cloth that must be perceived", wrote Honoré de Balzac in his Treatise on Elegant Life, in 1830. Almost two centuries later, it would be impossible to coin a more precise dogma to summarize the science, the custom and the feeling that are elegance. What we set out to do was not to challenge the wise man when we photographed Pedro Monjardín (coordinator of fashion studies at the Institución Artística de Enseñanza), but rather to go out in search of who best knows how to wear a suit, the defender of the principle, an expert in art to combine cloths. And there, without intending to, we ran into the man.

Everything that Pedro Monjardín has lost has not been recovered. "I always go to fifty things and, in the race, I leave something behind: the wallet, the house keys, the telephone, the umbrella, the scarf... What I carry with me is left behind," he says with the same nostalgic tone of the mechanical pencils he buys at the Salazar stationery store in Madrid. As he spontaneously lists the toilette of the perfect gentleman and reminds someone from lost property that he has found a real loot, he orders an American coffee, a carrot cake with two spoons and lets me know that there is something he wants to make clear in a report on the elegance where he seems to be the protagonist: "My life has been the countryside and the horses". Neither Paul Harnden's coats nor Maurizio Altieri's boots. Nor his black Converse or the pants the color of oriental spices that he buys in Morocco. Someone who doesn't talk about fashion but about "way of dressing", who has a weakness for tie pins and confesses that he would recover hats as a key piece of the male wardrobe, has "a long history"...

Despite studying at CUNEF (University College of Financial Studies), the current coordinator of fashion studies at the Institución Artística de Enseñanza, he was always attracted to the world of design. He always with a pencil in his hand and a camera around. "Fashion was a hobby, he followed it and understood it as another artistic expression, as an art that one can wear and that says a lot about the person who wears it". After almost 14 years working in the financial world, a change arose that he did not want to reject. "I had never been a teacher and I remember going to work on a motorcycle, happy, with young people...". Teaching managed to hook him as much as the countryside and the horses that marked his childhood. Everything starts from the field. "It was my refuge, my getaway. I have always been a rather lonely person, very inward and horses were my companions. I have ridden since I was little, my father wanted me to want to and then I turned it into my hobby and into my life. From the countryside I learned the importance of functionality: clothes have to serve a purpose. A jacket has to have pockets, a sweater has to be warm, riding boots are riding boots."

But if Monjardín could choose, he would not exactly recite Balzac, he would rather be that Herman Melville character who in "Bartleby, the clerk" repeats: he would prefer not to. He could make a very good living as a model, cashing in image rights to The Sartorialist, the magnetic focus of social gatherings and events, but he'd rather not. However, an elegant man also believes that one must sometimes break his vow of discretion if a friend asks for it.

What I like most about you is that you don't lavish yourself, that it's so difficult to see you.

Oh yeah? Well, you're going to get me on paper! (laughs). He is not premeditated. It's just that I'm very shy, I keep getting red and, lately, I notice that social conversations revolve too much around others: so-and-so, menganita... And that gives me nothing. Come on, take advantage and finish the cake while I talk...

"I DO NOT LIKE TO GIVE THE NOTE, there has come a time in my life when I do not care what others think. What they will say continues to weigh heavily and the opinion of others and that need to carry some codes to have a sense of permanence. Everything this has gone into the background for me. When you make that decision you become more you. Dressing freely should be taken as a discipline. You develop your own style and you can put on or take off some anecdote but you have already built your way of interpreting what you wear It is no longer fashion, it is your style. If someone looks at you strangely it is out of envy, because you have dared and they have not. What I have never liked is to give the note, I am not vindictive. "

Monjardín has been reinvented several times and changed its style many others. The changes, let's not fool ourselves, "they make me panic, but sometimes there is no other way and it is only about overcoming the vertigo of the first months". And his long history is accompanied by his consequent stylistic stages. "From English tweed and corduroy, from the heavy field, I went to the office in a suit, usually from Hackett, or from my father's tailor shop, which no longer exists, and from Camisería Burgos, on Cedaceros street. In the tie I It allowed some joy, like those of Comme des Garçons. I have two fixations: watches and shoes. I have never thought about what an investment, but how I want to enjoy it. With clothes the same thing happens to me as with art, I think I have I've been a bad collector because I've moved through my heart. If something moves me, go ahead".

Go ahead and into the kitchen. Inside his dressing room, in his bookstore, we will enter days later. "Antonio López once told me that there were two types of photographers. Those who come to a house and move everything and those who don't," jokes the photographer. ("The man of taste must enjoy everything he has", axiom XXV of Treatise on elegant life).

"Here you can change what you want", word of the host of a house where the Bauhaus coexists with the baroque, and not excessively "respected". We are making progress.

Pedro's "heart" is in the shower. In the form of a white and green coat that he has just bought in Uzbekistan. "Am I going to wear it? Probably not, but it feeds my spirits to see it hanging in the bathroom."

In his opinion, elegance and discretion should not go inextricably linked: "Elegant is from a white shirt and pants to, suddenly, the most extravagant, as long as it is in context. How are those tribes of the Amazon with feathers in head! Indian colored sarees are the least discreet and I find them most elegant. It's how you wear it, it's an attitude. You are elegant or you are not. Sometimes I wonder how between people from the same family who they have received the same education, seen and traveled the same, one is elegant and the other is not. It is something internal. Elegance is coherence. There are super-elegant humble people and others with a lot of resources who are to run. But going to the practical thing, to A good shoe is as elegant to me as a pretty slipper".

It is already known that a man becomes rich but is born elegant. There was a time when, within that detox hyperactivity that he told us about at the beginning, he got excited about launching his own men's label inspired by military clothing from the beginning of the century. A project still in potential that, for now, nourishes his wardrobe: some of his jewels are vintage. "The coat that I don't take off is a military coat, from 1921. A coat from 1921 in your size has to be yours!" And then there is the Spanish layer that acquires enormous visual strength in him and that he bought at El Rastro. "Right now a very good thing is happening: true democratization, because there is no longer a trend. Everything is going at such a speed that it overlaps, so all options are possible. One of the good things that the over-excess has had is that in the end anything goes. Now it's more about knowing yourself than what they can offer you."

Monjardín changes his clothes, walks barefoot, puts on a beautiful denim kimono that he found "in a Japanese store on Barquillo Street", prepares tea for the team..., all with the naturalness and slow flow that he demands of elegance. :"That effortless that the British say, that arises without effort".

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Historical: Maurice Ravel, Pablo Palazuelo, Gregory Peck, Yves Saint Laurent. And more current, the artist Masao Yamamoto, the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, and all those anonymous characters that I come across every day and that inspire me. The perfect robot portrait would include the English tweed, the French relax, the Italian lapel, the traditional suits of the East and some of the Spanish sobriety. We live in a society that continues to demand more from women than from men. It is assumed that it is the woman who has to take care of herself and the man does not. It is required of her and for him it is anecdotal.

In addition to state-of-the-art school furniture with "form follows function" principles, there are details in this house that give away its owner. Pasted on the fridge, old tickets for the Barbican gallery in London, David Hockney's books next to History of Polo in Spain (Elma Caballero). And a very curious title in another volume, which reminds me of the non-exhibitionist Monjardín spirit, anonymous, fresh air that travels on a Vespa and a Margiela sweater through the streets of Madrid: During the exhibition, the gallery will be closed (during the exhibition the gallery will remain closed).

Although he admits that he buys a lot online, he is clear that he would never give up the human part. "I arrive and have a coffee with the person in the store, then I buy or I don't buy but there is a dialogue, there is an exchange. In my favorite spaces (Lander Urquijo, Fernando de Cárcer, The Concrete, Mini, Sportivo, among others) they are not selling you, you are buying a story, a conversation, an experience. I believe that, in this line, the evolution of men's fashion will come from the hand of sustainability, the commitment to what and how, responsible consumption We're looking more and more at labels and where the materials come from." An aesthetic atrocity that he would never forgive? "Logos out of scale".

His first big purchase, however, was not a purchase but a gift: a Prada belt given to him by a cousin of his. "When I was still studying I told her about a store on Goya Street and how excited I would be to have something from there. Then one day, as a gesture of gratitude to another who thought I had with her, she appeared with that Prada belt that I still have."

Sometimes Pedro also loses, but voluntarily. "When I have the need to get rid of previous times, I call family, friends, who leave home with mountains flying. Then I regret it, I say I don't know when I gave that."

Oh, I don't know about that. That je ne sais quoi... "The grace of bearing, the adornment of the rooms (...). Talk, walk, run or get dressed, and I'll tell you who you are".

As long as a coffee

Meeting your idols or platonic inspiration: After some unrewarding experience, platonic inspiration.

White tie or smart casual: Smart casual, there is already much more freedom.

The British style of the actor Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl, The Theory of Everything) or the French of the writer Fredéric Beigbeder (13.99 euros): I prefer the sobriety of Eddie Redmayne.

Roman Polanski or François Truffaut: The authenticity of François Truffaut.

Queue or despair: If you have to queue, I'm leaving.

Correspondence or Whatsapp: I'm afraid WhatsApp, I don't even remember the last time I sent a letter, what a shame!

Change of perfume or eternal fidelity: If I identify myself with a scent I am very faithful.

Mapplerthorpe or Irving Penn: Difficult, but perhaps Mapplerthorpe because of the character he assumed and what he brought to photography.

Say where you are going on vacation or disappear without coordinates: Improvise whenever I can, it has its drawbacks but it allows me to change plans at the last moment.

Men's jewelry or strict minimalism: I tend towards sobriety, I'm more minimalist, but I find the concept of men's jewelry fantastic.

Write some memoirs or not recognize the merits Write some memoirs once you are aware of what you have contributed, or what you have been able to contribute to society.