Who is behind

This is how it all began

Maria and Anabel met on a train, going 250 km per hour, somewhere between Madrid and Seville. Anabel remembers Maria wearing her nails painted a beautiful burgundy colour. Maria doesn't remember anything special about Anabel. Months went by and they kept meeting. They would see each other around a bowl of spicy soup (her weakness), in a riad in Marrakech, discussing episodes of The West Wing and in the streets of  Madrid. 

Coinciding with the most turbulent days of the 15-M movement in 2011, they decided they had to do something. That "something" was still to be defined, although they knew it had three starting points: cosmetics, travel and the Internet. They met in Infamous Types with two red Delfonics Rollbahn notebooks. They started talking. The notebooks began to fill up with scribbles that only they could understand. The meetings lasted longer and longer.

The rest is history.

Laconicum was born on March 15, 2012. Anabel and María created Laconicum because Laconicum did not exist.

Anabel Vazquez

When he turned 18 his mother gave him a red of Dior and Chanel No. 5. The good woman didn't know what she had done. This gift, this rite of passage, set a precedent. Since then, Anabel has never stopped looking for the perfect lipstick and continues to believe that the best dress is a perfume.

She holds a degree in Information Sciences (University of Seville) and a Master's in Humanities and Social Thought (New York University); she worked in the Communication departments at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and the New Museum in New York.

Pleasures: swimming pools, without exception, The West Wing , add Tabasco to everything, return to Kenya, wander aimlessly, Martyrdom, the perfumes that take you on a trip, House Taken Over , the houses of  Barragán, the massages, the creamy body creams that smell of lemon and ginger, carrying several lip balms in your bag,  watch movies at breakfast time, 

In Spain, her career has been as scattered and heterodox as she herself: she has been a business and branding consultant, Information Architect, Head of Heritage at Loewe and has published in more media than she can remember. She writes about fashion, hotels, beauty and trends; “the pretty side of life”, as she sums it up. She is the author of the book Piscinosophy (Libros del KO, 2023) She always carries cosmetics to try in her bag; if you meet her on the street, she will force you to try them.

Maria Martinez

In June 2010, Maria went up to the stage of Cipriani in New York, armed with a yellow dress, to collect a Webby Award , the Oscar of the Internet. It was won by his idea, I wanna go there At that moment, he thought of a few things. He remembered a trip to India (the seed of I wanna go there), when he realized that there was a lack of different travel guides, in which travelers shared information and secrets.

Maria proposed a way of travelling transversally, between the lines, based on discovery. Her career of more than 10 years of experience in digital products has led her to work in companies such as Teknoland, McCann Erikson or Banco Santander. She also worked for  several years as a consultant at The Cocktail.

Pleasures: passport-sized notebooks with blank pages, Tratto PEN nº3 markers, the first bit of sun after a day at the beach, trying all the beauty treatments on the market, cilantro (even better if it's in a taco), discovering shampoos and having your hair washed, soups, citrus perfumes and walking quickly while listening to Beirut.

At the same time, María, a traveller and discoverer by trade, found interesting cosmetic products in every destination she visited. After that award came the Spanish version of that website, mimaleta.com. And the interviews, the conferences and the round tables: there are not many in Spain who have the Webby on a shelf. That night in New York, still holding her prize, Maria did not know that some time later she would unite her three great confessional passions, the Internet, travel and cosmetics, in a single website: Laconicum.