Haute Mediterranean Living

Pilar Pau. 'VLC Haute Couture'.

Fashion

“I have always sought to make the most of women as they are”

Pilar Pau decided that looking back is the best way to know what’s coming ahead. She’s the ‘Owner’ of Pau, a ‘boutique’ in which architecture and the most thoughtful fashion live freely. And where among other brands she unleashes her personal clothing brand Chocolat. Pilar has been in the fashion business for 16 years now and at age 20 she was already helping her mother with the key aspect of fashion: sales.

How was the Pau Project born?
The name Pau has always had a relationship with fashion. I started 20 years ago with the creation of TK that meant Teenagers Kianty and was directly linked to my mother´s boutique Kianty. I wanted to give a special significance to this project that I had not found at that moment. Changing the name was a risky decision, however the result has been incredible and the fortress of the name has become a reality.

What is Pau’s essence?
I have always sought to make the most of women as they are. I strongly believe that we women are our own worst enemy. That is why when I welcome a woman to my Boutique, I make her see that inside her there is a femininity that can flourish to empower herself and love herself through Fashion as a powerful vector as the image is and combined with intelligence, it gives us power.

What does Pau offer to her clients? Service, product, sensations, advantages.
Pilar counts with a huge experience and does a very delicate selection of top brands garments, selecting marvelous, good quality elastic fabrics, with weight, fall, that fit the female silhouette, with necklines, comfortable, flexible that in summary enhances women. All these advantages are wrapped in a commensurate price . These are international fashion brands mostly from Italy, America and France however Spain is also represented.

Has the Boutique’s design won an architecture prize?
Estudio DIIR is an architecture firm with its head office in Madrid founded in 2018 by David Meana, Ignacio Navarro, Iñigo Palazón y Ricardo Fernández, architects that belong to the Architecture School of Madrid (ETSAM). Their work explores different paths to achieve the singularity through innovation and thoroughness. From offices and shops to public buildings and residential complexes, Estudio DIIR incorporates the essential aspects of the present emphasizing social, cultural and environmental issues.

Estudio DIIR has developed the PAU project in Colon street that is today one of the most active streets, an in addition to its offer now it is the flagship store of the young new brand of clothes and accessories, that has been looking that the chosen local functions as a neutral support that will enhance the collection.

A grid divides the store in nine equal enclosures, and even though they remain perfectly defined by their thick partitions, the opening of big spans in row concatenates the stays in a fluid set: a parti of palatial reminiscences that unfolds around a sturdy red micro terrazzo staircase, the sole color note in this austere intervention. It is completed by some volumetric exhibitors that order the rooms and a local stone cladding framing the transitions between them, thresholds that one flanks into different spaces without knowing it.

What kind of satisfaction do you experience when you dress a woman?
When I dress women and they feel pretty I feel an immense joy, their face changes when one dress or an outfit changes their mood. For me it is a huge satisfaction to help and to please them through my work. Pau´s philosophy is based on that principle, to make a difference through fashion.