Actually there is no wheel, as it all began on a train.

María and Anabel met at 150 mph. Anabel clearly remembers María’s nails, a beautiful maroon. María does not remember anything about Anabel. They liked each other and kept meeting thereafter. They met with a bowl of spicy soup, they met in a riad in Marrakech, they met in the streets of Malasaña, they met to comment on The West Wing.

It was in the agitated spring of 2011 that they met to make a decision, something yet to be defined but with three starting points in mind: cosmetics, travel and the internet. They both brought their red Delfonics Rollbahn notebooks to the meeting and talk began. After long hours the notebooks were filled with scrawls and scribblings only they could understand. Still, Laconicum was born on March 15, 2012, and the rest is history.

Anabel Vázquez

On her 18th birthday her mother gave her a rouge by Dior and a bottle of Chanel Nº 5. That good woman didn’t know was she was doing. That gift, that rite of passage set a precedent in regard of an eternal passion and a quest for the perfect lipstick.

She studied in Spain and the US. She worked in the Commnication Dept. at the MoMa and the New Museum of New York. In Spain, her career is as disperse as herself: Web Consultant, Information Architect, Head of Heritage at Loewe. She has collaborated with more magazines than she can remember, sharing tips and secrets on fashion, beauty and trends —the pretty face of life, she says. All types of cosmetics are resident in her bag, and take for granted she will have you try them if you meet her on the street. Now she spends her time onboard or sitting before the screen. And yes, wearing lipstick.

Obsessions: Abandoned swimming pools, The West Wing, in and off-time siesta, adding Tabasco to just about anything, going to Texas, powdery perfumes that smell of Versailles, Casa Tomada, Casa Barragán, rich body lotions that smell of ginger and lemon.

María Martínez 

In June 2010 María stepped up in a yellow dress to the stage of Cipriani in New York City to receive her Webby Award for I wanna go there. She told the audience her idea  was born in trip to India, where she realised that a different type of travelguide was needed, one where travellers could share their tips and secrets. She introduced a new form of crossover travelling based on discovering between the lines.

An expert in digital branding and user experience, having worked with the likes of Banco de Santander, McCann Erikson, The Cocktail and Teknoland, María is also a restless traveller, an explorer by nature. And there isn’t one destination where she doesn’t find a new, interesting piece of cosmetics, the third obsession she can confess.

That night in NYC, holding on to her award, she still didn’t know her three public obsessions would soon be the pillars of a new web project. But before that came the Spanish version of her awarded idea, which became mimaleta.com. Talk was spread and soon interviews, conferences and round tables flooded in —afterall, not many experts can put a Webby on a shelf.

Obessions: Passport-sized white-page notebooks, Tratto PEN nº3 markers, orange colour, early sunshine on a day at the beach, Coca-Cola Zero, coriander (even more so in a taco), soup, citrus scents, unkept hair (she still can’t get it right), pace-walking listening to Beirut.