George Salud’s anti-clutter, anti-color pad : A young urban bachelor’s dream home

The guy doesn’t have a single printed shirt in his closet. Forget about printed pants for that matter even though he did attempt to play golf. All his ties are solid, though he admits to briefly going through that terrible phase in tie-print history called paisley. So, it isn’t much of a surprise to discover that his new pad in Makati is awash in white, beige, silver and wenge. Or that the four wonderful abstract paintings have no other color but black (in the living room), white (in the foyer), and two paintings in rust and olive put together to make them look like one (in the dining room). Of course, the pair of Bernardo Pacquing abstracts in the hallway is an altogether different matter.

George Salud, the businessman behind the necktie store Tie Line, likes things monochromatic and minimal. He likes it classic and classy in his home, the kind of design that urban dwellers drool over and not have to worry about dust because they’re so high up in the skyline even the mosquitoes have to take the elevator. I mean, really, would you have white walls and cream furniture if you lived on the ground floor of a busy Makati street?

George Salud’s pad fits a bachelor with no live-in maid, just somebody who comes in three times a week to tidy up the always tidy place. Because from what we see of George, he has a thing for neatness. If his pad were to be compared with a woman’s head, then not a single strand of hair would be out of place. He is anti-clutter, anti-floral, anti-color. Stripes? Hmm, he’d live with it if it was tone-on-tone.

We all know that the flats looking so effortless do require a lot of effort to achieve, perhaps even more than if the place were filled with belongings acquired through travel, inheritance, birthdays and holidays. It helps, of course, if you were disciplined by living in a 40-square-meter shoebox studio, as did George, with very little display-able space – sort of being forced to edit your belongings or you’d be scraping your knees every time you had to piss.

"It was a big change," George says of his move to his new home in July last year. "All of a sudden you had a living room, you had extra walking space, extra closet space." Well, it is 130 square meters.

The only drawback to the move was that in the beginning, he’d forget to switch off the lights and the air-conditioning system when he left. There was even a time he left the aircon on for two days. All these switches for the rooms when he just had one room before!

Even with his studio prior to this space, George was already living with only the bare essentials – stylish essentials, naturally.

"After a while you get used to having fewer things. Even with your clothes; something you don’t wear in six months puwede nang ipamigay."

When friends came over for the first time, their chorus was, "It’s very George." And that makes him happy. "For me, it means that the place turned out the way I wanted it."

That the style people see is George’s and not the interior designer’s is another mark of fantastic collaboration. George Salud did not personally know Eric Paras prior to enlisting his help. He had seen Eric’s work in a cousin’s home and liked it. "Although medyo hilaw pa at the time, I could tell there was something there."

That "something" came out in the creative process that ensued. There were one or two unusual things about this partnership. First, it was George who was editing, whether it was accessories or details in the furniture, telling Eric to take out and keep it streamlined. Most of the time, designers have to beg clients to please don’t display every freaking accessory with sentimental value; in this case, as Eric worked, George would nip. Second, it was a fast project. In six months, they managed to fill up a bare flat even though "we weren’t rushing." Sure, they didn’t knock down any wall, but Eric wanted to raise the floor in the bedroom by a couple of inches to create proportion in relation to the picture windows and a visual divider from the entrance, and they had to customize every single piece of furniture. Third, once the project was done, George settled down, and stopped looking at magazines and design books and stopped buying artworks. Ever heard of homes that are never finished? This isn’t one of them. "I’m not a never-ending sort of guy." Period.

Eric says the requirements were: simple, hotel-like interiors and mabango. "I just really interpreted what he wanted. He was a participatory client. I wanted to bring out his sense of neatness."

"It was such a smooth-sailing project," says Eric as he reveals that each of the smallest piece was discussed with George – including the cutlery.

George points to two armchairs and a sofa that were salvaged from his father’s office. "The nice thing about Eric was that he wasn’t particular about using old furniture," he says. The chairs were stripped of their stripes and reupholstered in beige fabric; the sofa’s arms were raised and the seats deepened and dressed in light color. The results were so good that both designer and owner scouted for even more old furniture in the latter’s family’s warehouse to see what they could rescue.

If the furniture’s influences come from two continents – France (Christian Liaigre) and America (Barbara Barry), reinterpreted to suit George’s taste and the flat’s space – the artworks are purely Filipino by choice.

The only figurative painting is in the den, set against a dark olive wall, the only non-neutral color you’ll find in this apartment. It’s an Angelito Antonio black-and-white, which is a little unusual since Antonio’s artworks are very colorful. George got this from his mom who had the painting – a one-time black and white series by Antonio – since the 1970s.

"I like it because there are three boys in the painting and my mom bought it for that," says George who has two other brothers – one living literally next door – and three sisters – making for frequent family get-togethers.

The abstract paintings are by Pep Manalang, Jason Oliveria, Ivan Acuña and Bernardo Pacquing. George began collecting only when he moved here. "When the place was fixed, I had already reached a level of contentment. Some people will not stop even when they don’t have the space for it. That’s not me. Happy na ako, I want to appreciate what’s here."

George’s exposure to contemporary design started early. The houses where he grew up in Laguna and later in San Lorenzo Village were both contemporary. As he puts it, even with the coming and going of the 1970s and 1980s – of brass and pastels and gold – his preference has always been silver and white.

This created a clash in the beginning. The original studies Eric Paras presented were of gray, blue and white. But George’s former studio was in blue and he was already sick of the color. He wanted a silver, white and black combination but Eric suggested replacing black with wenge – dark but not severe. One source of understanding was the shape of the furniture and furnishings: boxy, less of curved edges.

"The original studies were totally different from the outcome," says George. "With Eric, he wouldn’t stop until I was happy with the place and all my hesitations disappeared, because that’s how it is in the beginning, kinakapa mo pa yung designer and vice-versa." Take the glass-topped dining table with the X base. Three times, they had to do it all over again until it was a perfect X; or the floating shelf opposite the table, which they had to redo until it was perfect – this without imbedding it into the wall as is the norm.

Most of the soft furnishings in George’s pad were sourced locally: Pietro, Bo European Living, A Perfect Life, Sason, Rustan’s, Our Home, Shell Canvas, and believe it or not, even Unimart for the stemware (Rustan’s ran out of stocks) and cutlery from Santi’s. George laughingly reveals, "I was so happy when I found them at Unimart. The last time I was there, buhay pa lola ko! The fun is when you can get away with choosing something inexpensive and off the rack and it looks custom-made for you." Looks designer, too.

"It’s a matter of being patient in looking," he says as he relates how he went through an entire street in Hong Kong looking for knobs (he’s a firm believer than an ordinary cabinet can be made to look extraordinary with beautiful knobs).

George got his business training early. His father is a lawyer and his mom a teacher but both ended up in business. All six Salud children took up business-related courses, including George who started working at 19 and attending night classes in La Salle.

In 1983, his sisters put up Kirei, which they later sold, and seven years later, he put up Tie Line. Corporate wear is his bread and butter but you’d hardly see him in a tie (he owns around 20, by the way).

In a way, his philosophy in fashion is the same with his home: "The simpler it is, the better. It’s cleaner, it’s timeless."