KING KONG WE DIDN’T INVENT ANYTHING
So, yes, there definitely were things that could have been invented, but we didn’t invent anything. Not that we wanted to invent something new but weren’t able to; we simply never thought of trying. We didn’t think of it when in June of 2001, my business partner, Ivano, and I opened a store at Via Vigevano 14, in Milan, steps away from Porta Genova. We didn’t think of it when we decided to call the store King Kong (hereafter KK), for the well-known gorilla that conquered the world and the woman in one day, and then fell under enemy fire that same night: a goodhearted hero that paid the price for his appearance, misunderstood from the start. That’s how we felt six years ago- misunderstood and longing to conquer it all. Our ideas weren’t entirely clear, and neither was our plan nor our end goal. You could say that it was a bit like the tide was sweeping us away and so we decided to build a temporary raft to sit on while we figured out what to do with our lives. Now, in Milan, where everyone has a yacht, building a raft is already in and of itself a ridiculous undertaking; imagine doing and wanting people to notice. In reality, that raft became like Noah’s Ark for us. It ended up saving us. And not just the two of us; we pulled a bunch of people on board with us and headed
straight out into the open sea of life. But this whole store and raft tale, how is It at all related to a book of photos and illustrations? It’s related. It’s related because, almost immediately, we got fed up with selling snowboarding brands to teenage boys but we didn’t have much money to invest in research, or any experience with internet or import/exports. So what does one do? You make your own stuff to sell. Saying it like that makes it sound really romantic and politically conscious and vaguely anti-globalization. It was nothing of the kind: we hadn’t ever been looked upon too kindly by the squats because of our consumption of clothing, books, cds and material goods in general. You know how that goes. Let’s say that we were moved by a financial and organizational need that slowly transformed into a passionthe passion of having nice things to sell and to present and the passion to form a nice little group of people that was creating things and needed a showcase. So we assembled cds and magazines and we started shopping around for something for the clothing department. If I had to tell you how we were able to transform King Kong from a nice little store into a point of reference for a certain type of person, art and apparel, I honestly don’t know if I would be able to fit all of the pieces together.