Cecil Beaton was asked: What is elegance? And he answered: Soap and water.
By that he meant: let’s not talk about explicit elegance again, please. What is more interesting is everything that happens unintentionally, and that is born with no other pretension than the mere fun of existing. Soap and Water as an image of the simple, the useful, the lifelong. Unintentional elegance has nothing to do with aesthetics or contentment, nor with anything external. It is close to silence, the common good, patience, nature, the generous gesture, and the will to build and preserve.
In Agua y Jabón [Water and Soap] we talk about the love of public libraries, our parents’ honeymoons, the Cirlot family, Paul Léautaud, birds, the errant walk, suspicious hippies, the smell of bakeries, and train rides, Bruno Munari, Rei Kawakubo, Wagner’s Venice, eating fruit straight from the tree, kitsch, the Rastro, Josep Pla, manias, tricorns, Snoopy, Morandi, Barral, Bofill, surfing, tweed, cheese, gardens.