This must be the right door. Celine Lopez cannot be living in an advertising agency office. So you knock and nobody answers. You open the door just a little to peep in. And there it is: Celine’s studio, looking, as she planned it quite so specifically, "like a set from a Lino Brocka movie" circa today.
And there she is: The fashionista and the "it" girl, wearing a pink top and white pants (fashion-wise, it’s always summer for her, which explains the year-round tan), saying with apology that a big part of her inspiration was the tear-fest cable channel Cinema One.
"It’s that kind of look na parang may querida hanging around somewhere here. Kulang na lang lumabas dito si Vilma Santos. I wanted that kind of ‘70s opulence without taking it too literally. "
Ooh the drama! Or as she would say, the potential scandale of it all!
It is her dog Hercules that greets you, strutting to the door with what Celine describes as his "Nazi walk." Hercules, nicknamed "Herky," is a teacup chihuahua. He’s not actually as small as a teacup, but small enough for you to attach a string on his collar and dangle him on your rearview mirror like a stuffed toy. He jumps and barks at you like his eyes would pop out any second and you want to tell him, "Darling, do you really think you’re scaring me?"
The name of the dog gives you a lead on how Celine’s mind works: teacup chihuahua equals "Hercules." A bit of a rundown building equals Lino Brocka set. Candy-colored clothing equals 200-year-old antiques. A black and white photo of Celine taking a walk with Hercules in San Francisco Park equals an antique European-style painting from an estate auction abroad. The heart of Makati equals a day studio where she plans to pick up painting again and an evening party place for her and her friends. A retro-style kitchen equals empty refrigerator and cupboards but a full-service bar. Antique Aubusson carpets equal unfinished cement floors.
It’s eclectic for sure. So individual and so unique. And it works beautifully. Very Celine Lopez. Her love for irony must have worked overtime when she did the place. Or maybe she was in one of her "Delilah moments." She loves the surprise that people feel when coming here. "Basically, it’s an office building and I intentionally did not put any markers on the door para maasar lang yung kabila." (Referring, of course, to her neighbors.)
It took her two days to fix the place, but acquiring the stuff she has here took many years. Celine’s philosophy when it comes to buying is to get it when you see it. "Even if you have no space for it, it really pays to put it in storage because later on you’ll have use for it. And just because there’s a trend doesn’t mean you should follow it. At the end of the day you should always be aware of what catches your eye and the moment it does, get it. It’s very telling of your taste."
Before she and her friends did the place, the space was occupied by an office, which means it had a lot of small cubicles, corridors, one executive office and a toilet and bath. When she saw the place, Celine had absolutely no idea how to do it.
"I was too shocked to conceive of anything. It was completely different from what you see right now, para siyang dungeon. My boyfriend Victor Consunji, who’s an engineer, is very good at looking at spaces and planning them. He demolished the corridors that ate up all the space and the two rooms and now we have this huge living area."
That was the thing that Celine insisted on: A huge entertaining space, spoken like a true party girl, of course. "I noticed that in a lot of apartments, the living area is compromised, so guests tend to crash into your rooms when there’s no space in the living room."
The living and dining areas eat up more than half of the space. The dining table alone can seat up to 12 people while the living room holds a mélange of sofas and occasional chairs and pillows on the floor. One bedroom has a divan filed with oversized pillows while the other one is furnished with more antique chairs and a desk. This will be her painting studio.
And you thought it was a studio "studio," as in a small open-plan space without bedrooms, but the "studio" here actually means an "artist’s studio" where Celine plans to go back to painting, an influence of her uncle Emmanuel Lopez, an artist who grew up and lives in Paris. "Painting was my passion when I was younger. I used to paint a lot of watercolors, but now I’m trying my hand in acrylic."
The studio also affords her privacy and a measure of independence like what she experienced when she studied at Parsons and stayed in New York alone for a year.
"I love this place, the solitude. But it feels lonely sometimes to live alone. I stay with my parents and they’re kind of old, ayaw nila ng magulo sa house, so I entertain dito na lang."
By the way, she says this in the presence of her mom!
Something must be said of the design style that she chose. Or rather, the lack of a single design style. You hardly see Celine wearing dark colors, so you half-expect her place to be awash in off-neutrals – perhaps shocking pinks or lime twists or rose tints – adorned with bead curtains or furnished with sleek designer stuff, whether contemporary or modern retro as is the trend with young professionals. Instead, you find that her furnishings are old-fashioned but not outmoded, and to inject fun and a contemporary touch, she mixed these with modern lines. Her resources page would read like several plans for different homes: First, she raided her grandfather Fernando Lopez’s house for the 200-year-old monk’s dining table and matched them with very old chairs and modern ones from Dimensione; then her mother Emily’s old office for the luscious wooden sofa from Austria, the very one she used when she was a congresswoman and budget meetings extended to the wee hours; then she got some artworks from the family’s ancestral house in Forbes Park – from auctions and flea markets; then she put all the gifts that her friends had given her over the years, like a Popo San Pascual painting (from Patrick Reyno), an ostrich egg (from DJ Montano), pillows (from Miguel Rosales), and a photo taken by Victor of Celine walking the dog; then she sourced from stores such as Rockwell’s Lifestyles, Glorietta’s Homezone and Megamall’s Our Home, Azcor for the lighting and a swap-meet store called Segunda Mano where she scored the chandelier. And lest we forget, the antique Aubusson rugs from her grandfather’s house, which are scattered around the studio.
The style does actually make sense because while stylish Celine knows all about trends and all, she always emphasizes individuality. "Some people need a designer name in their couch or something, but now more people are becoming savvy, looking for good quality items that are not exactly branded and are a fraction of the price. I think they heighten the individuality of the place, especially if you source from different places. The tendency of some people is to get things from one or two stores only. So you have an Ikea apartment or a Dimensione apartment. No matter what your budget is, it’s always smart to go around."
This STAR Lifestyle writer – for Young Star, Fashion & Beauty and Sunday Life – and author of the book From Coffee to Cocktails, a compilation of her columns, admits she loves antiques because they have stories, but she made sure she put in contemporary pieces, too, "baka magmukhang may multo."
"The quirky bric-a-bracs and old things give it character. There’s a story as opposed to an overly stylized place where you can’t move, can’t spill anything or else you’re dead." She adds with a laugh, "I always describe this space as your crazy grandmother’s house."
Not Norman Bates-crazy, you hope.
Her buying style, she says, she inherited from her mom Emily. "She loves going to estate sales in the States. She has this thing for acquiring stuff from dead people. Here, I don’t go to garage sales because most of the time all they have is junk, but they do have a pretty good number of flea markets here like in Baguio." As she would say when confronted with a buy: "Fight!"
When it comes to fashion, Celine also stays away from buying brand names for the sake of buying brand names. She goes to a lot of vintage stores abroad, like American Rag on La Brea in Hollywood and Resurrection in New York.
"I love vintage stuff. Ever since I was 14, I would go to Haight Ashbury Street in San Francisco, which used to be the epicenter of the flower power movement. My parents couldn’t understand it, they called me a refugee. I really hate my mother for giving her stuff away!"
She’s a pack hunter, this girl. With her über stylish friends (all of them seem to be on flexi-time), she scours home stores and secret second-hand dealers. But during more quiet afternoons, she says, she likes going around home stores on her own.
Her current obsession: photo-print wallpapers. The kitschier, the better. The idea excites Celine no end. One of her home design dreams is to cover an entire wall with a sunset wallpaper.
You tell her: Go to the photo studios in the provinces where you can have your photo taken with the sunset behind you or in a French garden or in the Alps while you’re wearing tsinelas.
Actually, you’re thinking: Aren’t those for people too lazy to create a trompe l’oiel? But hey, this is Celini (as her friends call her). You can put a Monoblock sala set here and it’s going to look fun and quirky.
Five o’clock in the afternoon may be this society darling’s favorite time of the day because that’s the reason she chose the colors on the walls and draperies – butterscotch and mocha.
"With clothes what catches my eye is color. I’m a whore for color. I like things to have a warm effect on my eyes, ayokong mainit sa mata," she says. "When I first decided to do this place, I wanted it to have a perpetual five o’clock in the afternoon feel. I wanted it to look very warm and inviting. Everything is a little shabby, with jagged edges, furniture are to be seated on, to be touched. I go for the sensuous aspect of things."
She adds, "Even at night, it still looks like this. I wanted Schiaparelli pink, very flamboyant but I realized that while it’s fun to go into that room once or twice, staying there parang di ka makakaisip, mapapainom ka na lang talaga."
At five o’clock, there’s that feel of the day coming to an end. It’s near sunset, the sun is on its last rays. It has the weird color of gold and orange (a bitch when you’re directly facing it while driving).
Is this also the time when party people wake up – in somebody else’s bed if they’re lucky? Ha! Celine says she’s a good girl now, she wakes up early and goes to bed early, sober.
Yeah, and I’m the Queen of England.