Covadonga

The founder of TELVA magazine, and its director for thirty years, welcomes and captivates us in this interview for Alawa that we present here.

We went up in a thin, mirrored elevator that was too narrow for us. At the end of our upward journey we hit a stairwell. Everything had a tedious gray patina. Peeking into the emptiness of the infinite snail that the staircase drew gave vertigo.

The heavy, solid, brown, cold, angry door. On the other side, voices and hasty footsteps ring the bell. And then, Covadonga O'Shea happened.

A colorful, bright, morning gust of wind enveloped us like a baptism. The clean, deep, vibrant gaze; the big, open and infectious smile. Simply stunning elegance.

That sweet feeling of being at home invaded us, and yet we had entered his office. Anyone would have sworn to be in the studio of a "celebrity", because the walls full of memories held photos of her with people like Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, Jean Galiano Valentino, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Tom Ford ... However, nothing sounded like distant and distant in the microcosm in which we had just been introduced. I say "introduced" because that was our experience. Covadonga shook hands with us and bluntly put us in his heart.

 First of all, we want to thank you for your welcome and sincerely tell you that when you opened the door it was like a breath of joy and a fresh spirit.

Covadonga, in order to outline your face in two brushstrokes: you are Basque, from Biscay. Daughter of a large family of seven brothers. Which one of the seven were you?

I was the second. The older one already has a great-granddaughter.

 You are a journalist by profession and a philosophical background, right?

I studied Philosophy and Letters, and Journalism, but well, I did Modern Humanities, which was a special branch that took place at the University of Navarra for a few years, and which was all in English and French; it gave us an important cultural dimension.

My mother was a highly educated woman and my father was an engineer, and I took a course at La Sorbonne. I was always very interested in learning, and at that time it was not easy at all.

 After finishing your degree, young lady, and with four other people, you faced a revolutionary undertaking at the time: founding TELVA.

Yes, then there was a company that was "SARPE" (Sociedad Anónima de Magazines, Newspapers and Editions) and there they had Spanish news of our time. But I was not at all involved in the business issue; I was finishing my career in Pamplona. And they asked me if I wanted to be part of a team that was going to launch a magazine for women, and I said no, because I had been with a lot of guys in class who said to me: “what are you writing for? to the woman's page ”. And I said no, that I was going to be a war correspondent. That was like my defense, then what I said has come out in many places (laughs).

 Well it's another kind of war (laughs).

Sure, exactly. Since I liked to write and, anyway, I didn't mind spending a little time with that team that wanted to do a magazine, because I got into that “war”. There was an extraordinary woman, Pilar Salcedo, who has already died, who was going to be the editor of the magazine, and they wanted me as deputy editor of the magazine. I was very young and it seemed like a story, so I accepted. And in the end, when Pilar left the magazine for a number of reasons, the businessmen told me they wanted me to be the editor.

We did not know exactly what we were going to do, because then it was not like now. I did know the Marie Claire magazine, Vogue, but they did not exist in Spain. This was 1970 and I was director until 1997.

 As if that were not enough, in 1997, in which one could say "well, I have already closed a cycle", you have launched another pioneering venture in Spain. You get to found another equally revolutionary project that is the ISEM Fashion Business School, the first Business School Specialized in Fashion Business Management that exists in Spain.

Yes, because I did TELVA in Argentina for two years, and the truth is that for me it was a blow that for business reasons what was going so well, that people liked it a lot, had to be closed. Well, I started getting fed up. And I decided to leave TELVA, because I thought that if I had gotten tired, it would also tire my readers, and everything but that. And overnight, I already decided I had an associate editor who was great at running the magazine. And later, I spent two years very dedicated to writing and to other dimensions of my life. But then they invited me to organize a new master's degree in fashion at Galicia, at the University of La Coruña, and I wanted to try, because I hadn't gotten into the academic world at all. So I went to La Coruña every Friday and we organized that. We had classes on Saturdays and Sundays, and I was also encouraged by Amancio Ortega, a great friend of mine.

And he said to me: "Look, I love Galicia, but this is the finish terraeIf you organize something, don't do it here ”. And she stayed, and I thought that something could be done, so we rented a store and started giving some courses in fashion, but with a business sense. This is how I started, and in 2000 the ISEM Fashion Business School was launched.

We spent many years with the whole topic of new masters and working to focus fashion on the business theme. Everything had to be put together at a high academic level. It was then when we decided to transfer everything to the University of Navarra that they already had all the infrastructure for it. We gave them all the programs and content.

I have a fairly international mind, and before starting I went to Paris, to the IFM, “Institute Français de la Mode”, and I told them that I wanted to have an agreement with them to work on this master's degree, and we did it before starting with the ISEM. Then we did it with Bocconi in Milan and with Parsons in New York, that is to say that we already did many training exchanges with the students, and we stayed that way for 13 years. Until in 2012 everything was transferred to the University of Navarra; I have already completely disengaged myself. And that's when we started O'Shea & Moro Fashion Business Consulting. A consultancy where we look for international students and companies to do internships and work in different pioneering multinationals worldwide.

 You are also founder of the Tecnomoda Foundation, have been an advisor to the Museo del Traje and writer of several successful books such as Amancio Ortega's in 2008. You have not deprived yourself of anything!

Yes, Amancio Ortega's book for me was very impressive. There I have the Russian, Polish, etc. edition. And next to the photo giving a book to our current king, when he was doing military service at 17 years old.

  After having given us a precious global snapshot of your life, if you look now from the vantage point of the maturity you are in, what are those values ​​and foundations that have brought you here, to this place?

I think that knowing that life has a meaning. I did not program my life that way, but life has been programming me.

When I finished my degree, I got excited about the work where I could see a creative part, and the subject of communication at the international level, which attracted me a lot.

And then I think that I am a person who connects very well with people, they are things that God has given me and I have cultivated them, apart from having inherited many good things from my parents. But with a magazine like TELVA and at that time, because now everything has changed, I was able to meet some incredible characters from Margaret Thatcher, Valentino, Armani, I have done an interview with Queen Sofia, I have traveled the world. I also wrote another book on the Holy Land, because I am very interested in the people and the world in which I live.

Right now I would love to get to understand a little more and write about the radical change that has taken place from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXst century, for everything from climate change, new technologies, women's work. There are many things! I have that in mind, I want to do it.

As I said, I have been following the paths that life has presented me. And despite the fact that sometimes you may think that you have been a little managed, you end up doing things that you did not think possible, such as in my case, starting and directing a magazine or teaching a master's degree that ended up being something very big like the ISEM. If you are interested in something, you get fully involved in it and try to get it ahead, with the help of others as well. I alone could not have achieved anything, but I have always surrounded myself with exceptional people who have been of great help

 It can be said that you have been following calls.

Well yeah, call it a coincidence, great opportunities. When I was studying Journalism in Pamplona, ​​and everyone in the race was hesitating about the issue of mounting a magazine, the French cycling tour passed, entering Pamplona, ​​because it was one of the stages. They told the second years to go to the finish line, where the cyclists entered, and to do an interview, because they didn't know what to do with us. I went like crazy, it had been a very hard stage for them in the Pyrenees because of the bad weather and all the cyclists came in a very bad mood, they did not want to talk to anyone. They went to the La Perla hotel for dinner, and they did not open their mouths with any journalist. And I sneaked in and sat down with all of them, and wrote the article about my life, what they had for dinner, how they talked with their girlfriends, they didn't suspect at all that I was a journalist. And they published it in the Diario de Navarra, for me that was like my Pulitzer (laughs). There I told "human interest", the motivations and feelings of the cyclists, the jam they liked, that if his girlfriend had told him I don't know what, and then I wanted to follow all the stages of the lap because I thought it was hilarious.

 Now that you have described a bit of that young girl in Pamplona, ​​the Spain that we currently live in 2018 where terms such as: “influencers”, “startups” etc. are handled. It has nothing to do with that time when, for a woman, setting up and running a business was something revolutionary and even rebellious. How did you see yourself at that time? Rebel? Revolutionary? Or faithful to a vocation?

No, no, I always saw that I was having fun, that it was a challenge, that I had no idea. I only knew the international magazines we had at home: Paris Match and Vogue, and I thought doing that was fun, but I was going to be deputy director at the time.

 What do you think has been the key to TELVA's success?

Well, we had a conviction: TELVA is your magazine, woman. And not a woman just worried about the rags or getting cute, but a woman with cultural, social, family interests, that is, she was a support for that woman. We participated in a contest that would now be horrible called "The ideal woman", and the woman had to know everything: know how to make a wonderful paella, but she also had to know how to answer cultural questions and talk about her family, and I believed in that woman, who was gradually approaching that of the XNUMXst century. HELLO! At the time it was very good, but I wanted a magazine with strong and rich intellectual content for women.

 Your vision of the fashion industry is more than privileged, you know it from within. What is your assessment of how this industry has evolved?

It seems to me that fashion is a reflection of society, and it always has been.

I have been through all the great fashion capitals, Paris, London, New York, Milan, watching all the fashion shows, meeting the best. Here in Spain we mounted the TELVA fashion award and they came, from the first who was Gianni Versace, until today that one of the great international designers has not missed that dinner that was the most important in the world of fashion in Spain. The world of the 80s and 90s is very different from today. What happened? Years ago, haute couture was aimed at a small group of society, for the elite, let's say, but from there people saw what elegance was. This right now is out of fashion, but all that creativity is very important. And now we see that low cost and fast fashion stores do things that we say: "this is Channel", "this is Dior", mythical names in fashion. Those decades were important for fashion, as haute couture was mutating into Prêt-à-Porter, and becoming accessible to the masses. Because very exclusive people had access to haute couture.

Yves Saint Laurent, who had a great clothing line, did the Yves Saint Laurent Ready-to-Wear, and they were all still there. They didn't scale down, but instead of going to do seven tests at the couture house, you went to the store and bought it for yourself. All of this has kept pace with time, society, and women. Women and their world is changing. She incorporates herself into working life, and this she combines with her family life, and she travels and undertakes new roles in society.

In the United States, with the emergence of brands like Gap, a fashion begins that is no longer the elegant Pret-a-Porter. It is a fashion available to everyone, for price and use, which can be worn at any time of the day; It is clothes that can be taken everywhere, that fits in any suitcase, that does not wrinkle. It is fashion at the service of women, not the woman behind fashion. In other words, it is already a fashion for everyone. And from there we have crossed the border from the XNUMXth century to the XNUMXst century, which comes from low cost, fast fashion, influencers. What is happening is that there is a change of century, millennium, and civilization. But in the end, the elegant woman is dressed with the elegance with which she has been dressed at all times, searching at all times for what favors her the most.

 Before we said that you are a journalist by training and that you also studied Philosophy. Taking advantage of this merger, we ask you a question: does the fashion industry have something to say to men, when faced with their latest and existential questions?

As Calderón de la Barca said: “In this world nothing is true or false, everything depends on the color with the glass with which you look at yourself”. The fashion world, there are those who see only the frivolous part, but the great transcendentals of the Being are beauty, goodness, truth and unity. It is worth making a more or less affordable fashion, more or less creative, but that does not really leave aside beauty in its deepest sense. Because if that is abandoned, then what happens is that one ends up in disguise. Or the truth of what man and woman are, their deepest essence. Well, we don't live in a perpetual carnival. Fashion has changed positively, to put itself at the service of women. A woman who works, travels, who moves; In this sense, fashion has been simplified. But when fashion stops following that path, it stops producing good things.

 So you say that fashion can destroy us if it is not properly channeled?

I believe that there is destruction inside. When people attack fashion a lot, I get angry, it is people, it is not fashion. If you see an ugly thing in a store, it is you who decides whether to buy it, you put money on it. I defend fashion.

 If you had to specify the most laudable things in fashion, what would they be?

You are teaching me something in your designs that clearly what you are looking for is beauty and harmony. And the opposite is a horror. Look at the classic nudes, how wonderful they are, those that we have today in museums; that beauty comes from God. When you go against what is the essence of beauty, you end up destroying all that truth that exists in the beauty of the human being. What is important is people's attitude towards fashion, so what I think needs to be done is educate and know how to say things clearly.

 Change of heading. You have dared with books, you have written several, and on such different subjects and people, from Amancio Ortega to Juan Pablo II.

John Paul II was a great person. When I wrote the book, I prepared two hundred questions, took them to him, and he looked at me and said, "What about this?" (Laughs) He was a great person!

 Of the books you have written, which one do you feel most satisfied with? Or is each one like a different child?

Each one is different, but I really enjoyed Israel's. I went to Israel three times, and on the last trip I decided to study culture, history and religions. There I went thinking that I wanted to write, and I was with some guides who had a house in Jerusalem, she was born in Bethlehem and he was German, and the wall was already built, and they had to be living in Palestine. And I asked them why they were staying there, and they told me that John Paul II had asked Catholics not to leave this land. I spent a great week there; It was just Easter.

 Let's say you put a lot of heart into that book.

Yes, from all points of view, both cultural, religious and personal. It is very intense and interesting. I was in the Golan Heights, in a kibbutz, and also interviewing Golda Meir.

 You have had the privilege of directly meeting characters who have marked the course of history in this century. Who has impacted you the most?

Golda Meir made a big impact on me. She was a woman with great strength, she was willing to defend her land until the end. And then simple people. I remember a woman who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and I spoke with her and was shocked. I told her that I wanted to take a photo of her and she said not to her alone, because she would never have achieved it alone. So he called his entire team and I took their picture. Chapó!

And then, another that had a huge impact, was a French man who discovered the chromosome that generates Down Syndrome. A huge man, who is in the process of beatification. I had a very small place at La Sorbonne where I interviewed him. He was a wise man, and he made me understand what he was investigating, because he wanted to explain everything to me with amazing simplicity.

Also André Frossard, who wrote the book "God exists, I have found him". He begins his book by saying that he entered a church in Paris and was an atheist and from the Communist Party, and left there Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman. He went to a convent because he said he never wanted what he had seen to pass him by. At six months, he was told to go home.

 There is one of your books that I confess that the title struck me and captivated me: "The compass of life, a guide to not lose the north." Taking advantage of this great title, what has been the compass of your life?

Well, deep down, you hardly even ask, and thank God for everything. That takes you on.

 And finally, if we were to say "happiness" as the headline, what would you say?

Happiness is doing things well day by day. And if today has not come out, then tomorrow will come out better. Get excited every day, and think that you have a project of someone who knows much more than you, who is God.

 Since you have said it, it shows that behind this great woman there is a motor that is her faith.

Yes, and for this I thank my parents so much for transmitting this faith to me; my mother was exceptional, and my father was a lot of fun.

 That you continue working is a question that impacts us, why do you do it?

It amuses me (laughs). Am I going to retire? Life retires you, but I don't.

 Old age is talked about as something undervalued, society currently values ​​youth and beauty.

Well, that doesn't shock me, that's all great.

 Do you think we live in a very utilitarian society right now?

Yes, I have just written an article that will be published shortly called "The Galaxy 8.0", because I have turned 8.0, but I do not say the years (laughs). But it is that, if you let yourself sink, you sink. It is also true that having health and a series of pillars on which to lean, favors, but that does not go with age. I have not bought neither the health nor all the good things that God has given me. They have been given to me. I can only give thanks and put to the service everything they have given me.

 Covadonga thank you very much! We in this section precisely, we intend to show that "Beauty of the Being" of which you spoke, and that Beauty, we have seen today in you. Thank you for all that you have enlightened and encouraged us!

TELVA Magazine: telva.com

ISEM: www.isem.es