Who was Pedro Rovira? Why has his work been hidden for decades if it was one of the great Spanish tailors? Coinciding with the centenary of the birth of the dressmaker Pere Rovira i Planas (1921-1978), the Badalona Museum pays tribute to one of their illustrious sons with a wide retrospective that recovers the figure and contemporary spirit of the Badalona born couturier’s legacy .
In an illustrated monograph recently presented in parallel to the exhibition, Lorenzo Caprile assures in his prologue that Pedro Rovira “was in the middle of it all, but he stayed halfway”, referring to his premature death that prevented him from becoming a legend. The designer managed to develop his own identity throughout his career and was able to embrace two opposing currents: he began working with more classic Haute Couture through exclusive collections and later took a turn towards democratic fashion with more versatile and plural series productions that brought design closer to the new generations of consumers, beyond the bourgeois elites. On a historical level, his legacy also coincides in a time of transition: from the end of the dictatorship to the beginning of a new democracy with new customs, needs and ways of conceiving fashion.
From the oven to the needle
Pedro Rovira’s family owned a bakery in Badalona, but since childhood he had a great passion for sewing, making dresses for his friends’ dolls or painting figurines. A hobby his father did not like. He began studying medicine, but quickly abandoned the career for another job related to the needle: Celso Roldós, from Badalona, a tailor officer at the prestigious Santa Eulalia house in Barcelona, taught him the trade. Very soon Rovira would fulfill his wish to travel to Paris in search of new opportunities. He had high ambitions and he wanted to perfect his technique. In the French capital he became friends with Cristóbal Balenciaga, who would influence him greatly in his early days. In Paris he soaked up two years of trends through the fashion shows of the leading dressmakers of the time. When he returned in 1948, he founded his own haute couture workshop in Barcelona, in the Gracia neighborhood, although he continued to live in Badalona.
Boom and internationalization
Pedro Rovira’s fame spread like wildfire in the 1950s. The designer’s savoir faire, thanks to his Parisian background, together with his personal magnetism, quickly led to the recognition of the Catalan bourgeoisie with the support of several high-ranking ladies society who were assiduous to their refined designs. Later, when the Balenciaga atelier closed in 1968, some of the Basque dressmaker’s clients such as the Marchioness of Torroella de Mongrí, María del Carmen Ferrer-Cajigal and her daughter Carmen de Robert would also knock on Rovira’s door. In fact, Pedro Rovira was adept at dressing several generations of women from the same family with versatile and flexible designs that were adapted to every occasion. For Rovira, fashion was a servitude.
At the end of the 1950s, Pedro Rovira’s fame spread throughout Europe with shows in Frankfurt, Stockholm, Milan and Venice, and in 1964 his designs reached New York, seducing the North American public. On those trips he was accompanied by the most illustrious models of the moment who acted as ambassadors of his style: María del Carmen Aznar, Carmen Paré and Isabel Martín were the most common. Later, with the boom in ready-to-wear collections, he would work with the model and businesswoman Francina Díaz, the actress Teresa Gimpera and some sporadic ones like Nati Abascal, photographed by Antoni Bernad. International success continued in the sixties and seventies with criticism in their pockets and Rovira’s designs appeared on the pages of prestigious magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Marie Claire. After being acclaimed internationally and gaining recognition from specialized critics, in 1964, finally Rovira was admitted to the Cooperative of Haute Couture, which brought together the most elite fashion designers of the country as Pedro Rodriguez, Asuncion Bastida, Manuel Pertegaz, Santa Eulalia and the Floating Dam, considered the Big Five of Spanish Fashion. Carmen Mir also joined the cooperative the same year as Rovira.
The year 1968 was historical for Pedro Rovira. In full expansion of the brand, the designer decided to launch the first collection of democratic fashion with different lines for all ages, occasions and moments. That was a remarkable breakthrough in the history of Spanish fashion because despite some attempts by other designers, serialized proposals have never been launched with designer garments at more affordable prices. Pedro Rovira’s ready-to-wear designs were daring but very wearable. They combined fantasy brought to the street through geometric fabrics, graphic prints and vibrant colors for a cosmopolitan and contemporary woman who embraced the society of change in Spain.
An unexpected end
In the early seventies the brand had two boutiques in Madrid and throughout the country. Just when the firm was experiencing its greatest splendor, there was a setback that condemned it to a sudden fall and later oblivion: the designer’s precipitous death from a heart attack in 1978. He was only 57 years old. The firm that bore his name still worked for a time, since it had achieved a lot of diffusion and presence in the market, but without the claim and the great creative power of Rovira, the brand had to close in 1980.
An extensive legacy
After a first tribute at the Madrid Costume Museum by the Fundació Antoni de Montpalau, the Barcelona Museum has displayed all of Pedro Rovira’s work in a large retrospective exhibition dedicated to the couturier to commemorate the centenary of his birth. This exhibition, open from 4th June 4 to 18th October 2021, represents a broad and complete review of the work of the Badalona born couturier: it occupies two floors of the museum and is arranged chronologically following the production of Rovira from the early 1950s to the last collections from 1978. Some eighty dresses and more than one hundred drawings come from the Col·lecció Antonio de Montpalau, collaborator of the initiative, and pieces from the Badalona Museum collection and from the Rovira heirs are also exhibited. The tribute is completed by a documentary that rescues the memory of his legacy and a widely illustrated monograph. An extensive tribute to resuscitate the great figure of Pedro Rovira from oblivion and place it where it deserves in the history of Spanish fashion.
