Neue Luxury Issue 2

A GLOBAL DIALOGUE ON LUXURY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Issue No.2 | AUD $9.95

neueluxury.com

WELCOME TO NEUE LUXURY

LONDON & LUXURY

A note from our Founder & Editor in Chief

Welcome to the second issue of Neue Luxury.

Firstly, I have a confession to make. It feels reassuringly good to welcome you back. After all, it only seems like yesterday that we were putting the finishing touches to our inaugural issue, while quietly contemplating if our decision to launch a global luxury broadsheet from the antipodean shores of Australia, was indeed the right (read smart) thing to do. But as I sit here in the departure lounge of a bustling Sydney airport, recounting the freneticism of the last six months, along with the ongoing and tectonic shift that we continue to observe within Australia’s luxury landscape, I am pleased and proud of our decision to push on and invest.

There has been a great deal of commentary in recent times around the strategic opportunity that Australia’s geographic location and proximity to Asia offers purveyors of luxury goods and services. Having long been considered

by Europe as an exotic outpost of potential, Australia has always sought to embrace its European heritage while advocating the virtues of American style commercialisation. Over the decades, this curious sensibility has not only moved adventurous and ambitious business leaders, artists, designers and makers to contribute to a global dialogue on luxury, but to interrogate and challenge its amorphous concepts entirely. A sentiment to which we strongly subscribe.

To this point and on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Firenze Hometown of Fashion, I must also extend my congratulations to our foundation partner Harrolds Luxury Department Store, for being recognised by The Business of Fashion as one of the top 30 menswear retailers in the world at Pitti Uomo in June. As you can imagine, we are proud of - and excited for - Harrolds in equal measure.

I am also equally proud to introduce issue two along with our focus on the luxury of collecting, collections and collectors in the 21st century. A journey that has taken our team on an incredible adventure over the past few months.

We discovered the internment of art and ideas at Expérience Pommery (p4), discussed notions of madness and identity with Kaya Sorhaindo of Berlinbased fragrance house Folie à Plusieurs (p6) and discovered the extraordinary initiative that is and will continue to be, the MPavilion (p16).

I trust that you will enjoy the issue along with the many layers, personalities and stories that we endeavour to reveal. While you do so, I also extend my sincere thanks to each of our partners, contributors, staff and supporters for their ongoing and extraordinary support of Neue Luxury. You continue to afford us the freedom and inspiration to pursue this dream.

BRETT PHILLIPS Founder & Editor in Chief

EDITOR IN CHIEF Brett Phillips brett@neueluxury.com Telephone +61 3 9687 4899

PERSPECTIVE

EDITOR Rechelle Friend rechelle@neueluxury.com EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR David Roennfeldt david@neueluxury.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR Lachlan Sumner lachlan@neueluxury.com PRODUCTION Maryanne Stanic maryanne@neueluxury.com FINANCIAL CONTROLLER Troy Roennfeldt Troy@neueluxury.com SPECIAL PROJECTS DIRECTOR Brett Phillips brett@neueluxury.com INTERNS Tom Clapin ACCOUNTS Gary Charman gary@neueluxury.com ADVERTISING & DISTRIBUTION Brett Phillips brett@neueluxury.com PUBLISHER 3 Deep 35A/91 Moreland Street Footscray, Victoria 3011 Australia Telephone +61 3 9687 4899 Facsimile +61 3 9687 5133 Email: info@3deep.com.au Web: www.3deep.com.au © Neue Luxury MMXIV ISSN: 2201-6309 SPECIAL THANKS:

Andrea Artioli, Hayley Bonham, Robert Buckingham, Daniel Burns, Damian Cessario, Chase Coughlin, Gary Charman, Dr Rebecca Coates, Stephen Crafti, Neil Davies, Olivier Deschang, Bon Duke, Ray Edgar, Lucy Edwards, Kym Elphinstone, Felicia Eriksson, Inge Fransen, Sophie Gannon, Martin Ginnane, Sean Godsell, Andrew Hazewinkel, Katie Hailes, Briony Hamilton, Andrew Hazewinkel, Angela Hesson, Lui Hon, Michael Van Horne, Graham Imeson, Stephen Jones, Byron Kehoe, Annika Lievesley, Luka Maich, Toni Maticevski, Patrick McIntyre, Stefan Mee, Naomi Milgrom AO, Kyungah Min, Roberto Monetti, Sean Mulquiney, Rosslynd Piggott, Mary Poulakis, John Poulakis, Charlotte Radu, Amanda Ritson, Troy Roennfeldt, Nadia Rosa, Dr Kathryn Simon, Kaya Sorhaindo, Maryanne Stanic, Sølve Sundsbø, Susan Taylor, Peter Taylor, Daniel Thawley, Paul Tierney, Paola Di Trocchio, Joseph Topmiller, Vincent Lazzara, Bonnie Ledsam, Louis Le Vaillant, John Wardle. Sean Godsell Architects, 3 Deep, Art & Commerce, [art]iculate, Artioli, Cover to Cover, Folie A Plusieurs, French-Australian Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Ginnane & Associates, Harrolds Luxury Department Store, Ikon, John Wardle Architects, Lesley Kehoe Galleries, Lui Hon, Kaimin, Maison D’Amore, Maserati, National Gallery of Victoria, Naomi Milgrom Foundation, Stephen Jones Millinery, The Black Soft, The Drawing Center, The Johnston Collection, Visual Thing, Vranken Pommery, The Estate of Lebbeus Woods.

Page footer image credits: Pharrell Williams (flickr.com/photos/so-vicious). Tomas Maier (Morpheusmedia). Karl Lagerfeld (flickr.com/photos/siebbi). Walter Benjamin (Public Domain). Walter Van Beirendonck (flickr.com/photos/nattyboom).

Nick Cave (flickr.com/photos/ubudwritersfest). Carlos Slim(José Cruz/ABr http://busca.ebc.com.br). W.M. Hunt (flickr. com/photos/museumphotographer). Claude Levì-Strauss (flickr.com/photos/markos2008). John Cusack (http://www.vflickr. com/photos/dsifry).

Neue Collectors image credits: Sophie Gannon (Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Shadow, blue, 2011, translucent porcelain, 26.5 x 42 x 30cm. Photo: Brian Hand.) Kaimin (Photo: Bon Duke). Bon Duke (Photo: Hugo Arturi). Sean Mulquiney (Small Packages, 2013. DOP Sean Mulquiney. Director Dan Johnson).

Six Dimensions of Luxury image credits: Dover St Market (Stéphanie Moisan, flickr.com/photos/journaldesvitrines).

Rick Owens (OutsaPop Trashion DIY fashio, flickr.com/photos/outsapop).

Disclaimer: Neue Luxury is published twice yearly by 3 Deep Design Pty Ltd. 35A/91 Moreland Street, Footscray Victoria 3011 Australia. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission is strictly prohibited. Every effort has been made to ensure that all information is correct at the time of publishing. Opinions published are not necessarily those of the editor nor the publisher. Every effort has been made to trace accurate ownership of copyright materials used. Errors or omissions will be corrected upon request provided notification is sent to the publisher. The moral rights of the authors have been observed.

Cover image supplied courtesy of the artist: Andrew Hazewinkel Untitled [Julia Aquilia Severa] 2013 Pigment print on archival paper 44 x 66 cm First exhibited in The Piranesi Effect.

The Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne. www.andrewhazewinkel.com

By Martin Ginnane

I love London. I love its energy and diversity, especially over the last decade. Over the last six years, however, a rapid change of the retail luxury streetscape has occurred that is worth exploring.

I don’t intend to go too deeply into the democratisation of luxury brands and how that has come about (as I believe most of the people reading this will be aware, to some extent, of such changes), except to highlight the following:

As the globalization of luxury brands continues, as more and more houses come under the control of the all-powerful few, even London’s famous New Bond Street has started to take on a Regent Street/Oxford Street feel. What is bespoke becomes obvious; what is small and individual becomes less so.

Thousands of tourists line up to enter the massive Victoria’s Secret store. Next door is the even bigger Belstaff store which is across the road from the new huge Bally store. Throw in the beautiful Zegna, Canali, Ralph Lauren, Tiffany & Co, Hermes, Smthyson and a wonderful Lora Piano store (LVMH), and every other brand capable of paying the staggering rents on this street and what do you have?

A luxury shopping mall worthy of Dubai?

Once, luxury was available only to the rarefied and aristocratic world of old money and royalty. Their luxury offered a history of tradition, superior quality and a pampered individualised buying experience. Today, however, luxury is also a product packaged and sold by multibillion-dollar global corporations focused on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising and, above all else, profit.

Where has the individuality gone? Where has the expertise and craft gone? Walking through London’s shopping streets you need to stop and look at the Victorian façades to remind yourself you are indeed in London; the identical shop windows are in Paris, Hong Kong, Berlin, Singapore and Melbourne, rolled out in unison, season by season by globalised design teams.

The democratisation of luxury brands is helping to drive the global economic market. The consumer now has the ability to shop in whichever way he or she desires. Choice and availability has grown across the globe as price has fallen due to supply logistics and the opening up of new markets.

Sit upstairs at the Selfridges Champagne Bar and watch the cross-pollination of shopping made visible by the bags people are holding: Selfridges, Marks & Spencer, Primark and Chanel lay in harmony alongside one and other.

In this world of expanded choice and megalithic retailers, where does a concept of luxury exist? Customers in London, as in the rest of the world, are offered perceived and real luxury now in everything from toilet-tissue to soap, food and wine to cars, clothing and footwear to coffee and service.

How do we judge the luxuriousness of a product? What does it do for us beyond its perceived value?

Does it equate to the dark-suited security guard — replete with earpiece — standing in the doorway? Does it equate to the number of black Bentleys or Range Rovers parked at the front of the store? Or, very simply, is it merely the price of the merchandise? Do these symbols carry through the product to our perceived identity? Or is it the craftsmanship that pleases us emotionally? Is it our aesthetic value that is being massaged, overwhelmed, romanced?

In 2004 in quiet Dover Street, just off Piccadilly, Dover Street Markets opened. A unique space with unique merchandise and specialised staff, it delivers something different, something being lost elsewhere by any number of factors — but most significantly by the urge of global corporations to try and appeal to everyone. Discreet Luxury is a new format that has been so successful there are now stores in New York and Shanghai.

Will this change when Victoria Beckham opens in the same street later this year? Will the rows of identical black Range Rovers and identical blonde wives of football players, the Chinese tourists rolling in ‘new cash’, desperate for imported celebrity and brands — in order to create their own new history — drive up rents to the point that only global companies can exist here? In this new environment, what will our concept of luxury be?

Where will it have space to exist? Will the charm of Dover Street be lost?

Most probably.

Just off Bond Street is a slightly hidden gem called Clifford Street.

Anderson and Sheppard, one of London’s most respected Savile Row

tailors, have brought luxury to an affordable level with the opening of their Haberdashery store.

In this place there are no security guards welcoming you, just a small bell over the door and an open fireplace. The wonderful Audie (the store coordinator) greets you and shows you the most amazing collection of ready-to-wear men’s clothing in London. They’ve created, just for you it seems, an atmosphere reminiscent of a home. Comfort, privacy, unique designs with limited supply and wonderful, wonderful service.

On leaving the store Audie calls out, “don’t forget to call by if you are passing in the afternoon for a sherry.”

On the opposite corner, bespoke with blue awnings and blue tiles punctuated with warmly lit windows, is Drakes. Again we have accessible luxury clothing but presented with style and sold to you with knowledge and confidence in a townhouse-like experience.

And Mount Street. Why Mount Street? Because you feel special as you walk down the street. The brands are international but you feel connected to them in terms of store size and their street presence. There’s Mount Street Printers, who design and manufacture some of the best stationary in the UK, and the amazing new Celine Store located blocks away from Bond Street. There’s one of London’s oldest and most respected butchers (what can be more luxurious than a fine cut of meat?) sitting by one of the world’s true luxury brands, Maison Goyard, trunk makers.

Street after street in this area still offers the wonderful experience smaller stores and unique curated products can provide.

Nestled nearby is a beautiful quiet church courtyard and further on, in Brook Street, the iconic John Smedley knitwear store. Established in 1794 and still manufacturing in Britain, the prices, while not inexpensive, are far less so than many of the global companies on Bond Street. But John Smedley oozes comfort, discretion, knowledge and again, service, service, service. Here there is something that will never, can never, be replicated in a mall.

Reaching Oxford Street you are quickly brought back to reality.

While the stores do not open until ten am, the streets are always packed with tourists wandering around gazing lovingly at the window displays.

And why? The windows back home are identical, after all.

Oxford Street is still a mecca for shopping but not for luxury. While luxury products are still available at the grand dame that is Selfridges — and no one does theatre retail better than Selfridges — the experience there is not one of luxury.

Witness the queue three deep at the Gucci counter. Visit the new three-level Louis Vuitton townhouse in the middle of the ground floor. It is stunning. But can a queue waiting to use the only oval lift in the world be viewed as luxurious? Glamorous, yes. Architecturally beautiful, yes. But luxurious? Not for me.

You can buy almost anything you need on Oxford Street. But the homogenisation of the street has also made it lose its lustre; it has become a victim of its own success. The tourists who come here to experience its essential ‘Britishness’ might find there is not a lot of that left.

Head north of Oxford Street to the wonderful Marylebone area. Much of this remains under the ownership of the prestigious Portman Estate and retains much of its 18th century charm.

Here, there are many long-term tenants and new ones are selected to ensure, as it remains up to date, the integrity of the area remains. The pace here is slower. Visit Ciri Trudon, the oldest wax manufacturer in the world, where you will be individually guided through the amazing range of scented candles all encased in hand-blown glass. Try Solis Rex, a fragrance inspired by the vast wooden floors of the Grand Versailles, a place whose luxuriousness brought down a monarchy.

Keep searching and you’ll find Trunk Clothiers, a small but wonderful two-storey building with its aesthetic and merchandise beautifully edited.

The Burberry Prorsum fall/winter collection featured umbrellas with sterling silver handles as a fashion item. Archer Adams, another wonderful store in Chiltern Street, has, been producing them for decades, not as a fashion item, but as useful, traditional craftsmanship.

My idea of luxury is about discovering what makes you excited. It can be as simple as a second-hand book long out of print, or a magnificent pocket square woven in Istanbul. It can be a beautiful charcoal grey cashmere jumper or a vintage scarf that is fifty years old. When you wear it, people say where did you find that, as opposed to where did you buy it?

Luxury is a discovery, not a commodity.

FOR MORE WWW.GINNANEASSOCIATES.COM.AU

NEUE COLLECTORS What do you collect and why?

Doesn’t everyone collect something? In an age of ephemeral digital exchange and parallax social engagement, it’s always interesting to pause for a moment and understand if people still collect and why. Surely, we could assume by now that the notion of collecting has evolved in keeping with other patterns of consumption and social dogma? Or is it still possible that the deeper, more latent cultural, spiritual and emotional underpinnings associated with ones identity, memory, legacy or mortality still capture our attention and govern our desires? Neue Luxury asked the question of seven cultural influencers from around the globe and was reassured by the responses.

PATRICK MCINTYRE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY Ties are like semaphore: a hoisting of coloured fabric to communicate without words. I have a lot of them and keep adding to the collection. There are ties to communicate cheerfulness or sobriety, approachability or restraint, provocation or respect, formality or intimacy. Whether or not these nuances are as legible to the outside world as I imagine, they certainly help put me in the right frame of mind for the day’s challenges. While a nice new tie can cost as much as a good pair of trousers, whenever I am complimented for my tie, it is usually an old piece of polyester from the ‘70s that I pinched from my dad’s wardrobe.

SOPHIE GANNON GALLERIST I turned what I collect into a career. I began my arts career at Sotheby’s everyone in the auction business is a collector of some sort. Opening up my own gallery has allowed me to pass on a love of collecting art to others. My art collection at home tracks my personal history. I can see my taste and interest change by looking at the chronology of my collection. There are pieces in my collection that are still in bubble wrap and boxes because I don’t have room to display them. But I keep on collecting – the desire to collect endures.

KAIMIN CREATIVE DIRECTOR & CONCEPTUAL ARTIST I do not collect any one type of item, but I do have a swelling compilation of objects – books, art, and clothing – that are unified by a central theme, reflecting my overall aesthetic palate; a study in the realm of style. With no real pattern of assembly, this collection traces the journey of my floating mind. This glimpse of the past also encapsulates my hope for the future: infinite challenges and experiments to dismantle the status quo on the way to a new vision and the building of a creative empire. The most recent focus is my own fashion label KAIMIN.

BON DUKE PHOTOGRAPHER & FOUNDER OF THE NEW YORK FASHION FILM FESTIVAL I collect rings. I love to curate them on my hands and they become a part of me. It has to be a ring that screams out at me. It’s a collection overtime that I enjoy. Whenever I lose a ring, I don’t get a replacement. It just means that it wasn’t meant to be. Rings are also part of my identity, without them I feel naked!

TONI MATICEVSKI FASHION DESIGNER It could be said that I collect vintage perfumes. I collect more so for the sense of what the scent represents at the time, what the scent is, how it’s worn, how it’s packaged and just the overall feeling associated with that scent. I collect to use, not to keep. There is something quite romantic about the idea of opening a fragrance created forty or fifty or sixty years ago and wearing it today. The difference in the feeling associated with the name given to the scent, how it was bottled and packaged. I also love the aura associated with it, the time, the clothes that accompanied it, the imagery and the sentiment it brings when I put it on.

SUSAN TAYLOR AND PETER JONES BOUTIQUE OWNERS For me, it started with drinking straws and patterned shoelaces. For my husband Peter, stamps and cricket books. After getting together, our collecting impulse found its way ultimately to non-objective art, specifically geometric abstract painting, contemporary jewellery and artist’s books. These stimulate us both intellectually and emotionally. We both love finding connections between things, the constant learning involved and the excitement of the chase and the capture. Collecting has also connected us to lovely people we wouldn’t otherwise know, not least the artists themselves, who inspire us to look more closely and carefully at everything. Now we are starting to share our collection and knowledge with others through our in-house gallery Spare Room 33.

SEAN MULQUINEY FILMMAKER I love and collect films. So many in fact, that I no longer have anywhere to store them. Stacked in assorted piles and in no particular or disciplined order, they represent a body of work much as fleeting, cinematic moments for me. I also have an interest in collecting individual scenes and shots that may interest me from a composition, lighting or dialogue perspective.

I love the serendipity of re-discovering these moments for inspiration and the development of my craft.

NEUE DIALOGUE –

Global perspectives on luxury, ideas and creativity.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

FROGMAN BALLAD –

Anything in life worth doing is worth overdoing.

Moderation is for cowards.

ADRIAN JOFFE –

Throughout history there has always been evolution of ideas.

Without those, without creation, without art, without culture - there can never be progress.

FRANCIS KURKDJIAN –

Luxury is about an experience.

OSCAR DE LA RENTA –

The most important thing about fashion is to have the memory of a mosquito. Don’t ever look back; always look forward. You are as good as your last collection.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

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Photo: Sølve Sundsbø, Art + Commerce

STEPHEN JONES Thinking seasons a ‘head’.

FASHION

By Stephen Crafti

IN THE EARLY 1980S JONES WAS A REGULAR AT LONDON’S BLITZ CLUB. THE PULSATING RHYTHM FROM BANDS SUCH AS SPANDAU BALLET CREATED RIPPLES ON THE MUSIC SCENE. THE MILLINERY OF STEPHEN JONES WAS ABOUT TO CREATE THE SAME RIPPLE IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY. TODAY, THIS RIPPLE HAS TURNED INTO AN ENORMOUS WAVE, WITH JONES’ HATS RECEIVING APPLAUSE WORLDWIDE. A WHO’S WHO OF THE FASHION WORLD Pinning down a time to speak with Stephen Jones isn’t easy. As soon as he returns from Fashion Week in Paris, he sets off for Japan, literally with no time in between. But when you start to compile a list of the world’s leading fashion designers he collaborates with, patience is obviously required. Raf Simons, Walter Van Beirendonck, Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Jean Paul Gaultier and Rei Kawakubo are just a few of his friends and collaborators. He has also worked with Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana and extensively with John Galliano, the latter who graduated from Central Saint Martins School in London a few years later than Jones. “I still remember John (Galliano) asking me if I’d make hats for him, soon after he graduated. From memory, I think I said, ‘I don’t think that’s likely dear’.”

When Jones counts up the number of hats on ‘board’, needed for the

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN –

Some of the most brilliant artists in the world didn’t talk posh and didn’t fit in. But a Van Gogh goes for £30m now. It comes down to what’s inside.

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various designers, it’s staggering, getting close to four hundred a season, and that’s just for the catwalks. “The arrogance of youth is replaced with the neurosis of age. With age (now 57), you’re much more aware of what can go wrong,” says Jones, who is not only prolific, but is as creatively charged as the day he started. His passion for his craft is beautifully expressed in the book Hats an Anthology, published by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

of the club, was a client of Jones’, as were members of Spandau Ballet and androgynous performer Boy George. “My first hat for Steve was a skull cap in black and gold, with an eye patch attached,” says Jones, who from the start of his career commanded impressive prices. “I think it was 70 pounds, quite a lot at the time.” Jones’ designs are sculptural masterpieces. Every piece is literally a work of art, even those pieces designed as simple day hats.

“It is the momentary glimpse in which the customer is hooked and driven to pursue their hat. It lies in capturing the imagination and fantasies of the customer, while also assuring them that their choice will inspire admiration on the onlooker”(page 78, 2009).

PUSHING BOUNDARIES Jones’ ‘Crown’ for Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 2006 collection presented the ‘Crown’ as a skeletal form rather than the bejeweled and heavy designs worn by royalty. His ‘Arrow’ hat for Christian Dior’s Haute Couture Autumn/Winter collection a year later, inspired by an original Dior design from the late 1940s, is as commanding. Jones’ hat is cheekily ‘pierced’ by a marquisate arrow resting on the model’s bare shoulder. As whimsical is his ‘blanket hat’, designed for John Galliano’s Autumn/Winter 2002 collection.

Who else but Stephen Jones could conceive a felt blanket fashioned into a hat and bound with an animal skin? Jones also continually explores materials, like an architect who discovers the possibilities using the latest technology. Even in the early 90s, he was finding new ways to work with bulrushes, beautifully expressed in his ‘Kon-tiki’ hat, where each bulrush is curled not dissimilar to a Doris Day hairstyle from the late 1950s.

BLITZ CLUB – NEW ROMANTICS Like many creative people starting out in the 1980s, the admiration for theatrical dress started at the Blitz Club in London, a drawcard for the ‘New Romantics’, and Jones’ stomping ground. Steve Strange, leader singer of Visage and owner

RACHEL FEINSTEIN –

I think that all your ideas come from your childhood and your early teens and your early twenties, and you just figure out how to make them later in life.

HATS AN ANTHOLOGY When Jones’ Hats an Anthology exhibition was showcased at the Queensland Art Gallery in 2010, almost three decades after his career begun, it was easy to see why this master milliner, recently knighted by the Queen, is in such demand. His own hats, along with other designers from Victoria & Albert’s permanent collection attracted record crowds. Even in Australia, where hats

BERNHARD WILHELM –

The fashion industry tends to have a very short-term memory.

SARAH ANDELMAN –

It’s never about “commerce,” but just coups de foudre. I never ask myself what people expect to find at Colette, —I just hope to surprise them with something they can’t resist buying.

don’t receive the same allegiance as in Europe, the power of this collection of designer hats was unprecedented, with the exhibition attracting an impressive audience of 9,500 people per day.

In the exhibition was a Balenciaga straw beret from 1950, as well as the famous shoe hat by Schiaparelli from 1937, the latter purchased by the V&A for 40,000 pounds. Designed by Dali, it was an astute purchase. “You wouldn’t get a Dali sketch for that price,” says Jones, who sees this design as an amazing form in the first instance, as well as an ingenious way to express a shoe. The exhibition also brought back memories of the Blitz Club, with Leigh Bowery’s ruffled orange ‘tutu’ hat included in Hats an Anthology. One can almost see this larger than life character on the dance floor just by looking at this hat. “It wasn’t just about following fashion. As important was how you put things together,” says Jones.

Unlike the 250 hats in the Hats an Anthology exhibition, curated by Jones and Oriole Cullen, Curator of Modern Textiles and Fashion at the V&A, Jones’ personal collection of hats is relatively modest by comparison. “My collection is primarily of ‘working’ hats,” says Jones, picking up a neat black cloche style hat from the 1920s. “I’m just as likely to reach for a great beach hat from the 1960s or even something quite simple, such as a baseball cap.”

THERE WOULD BE NO HATS WITHOUT HAIR Jones’ Roxette plastic wig hat (circa 2002), plastic hues in varying shades of red and pinks, beautifully captures the fashion trend of hair highlights of that time. In the exhibition, Roxette was thoughtfully placed next to a wig made from an unknown designer from the early 1920s. Made from metallic thread, the bob-style, with its gentle curls ‘speaks’ to Jones’ design. As mentioned

by Jones in his book, released for the Queensland exhibition, ‘there would be no hats without hair’ instantly conceding exceptions while running a hand

PHARRELL WILLIAMS –

Some people just have that innate thing that allows them to express themselves in a way the majority can follow, that’s when you’re affecting culture

Neue Luxury, No.2

Beep, SS14 Carte Blanche. Stephen Jones Millinery. Photo: Peter Ashworth

over his own smooth and hairless crown. “The milliner needs to work with, rather than against, the client’s hairstyle” (page 105, 2009).

MUSES –DJ’S PRINCESS JULIA AND SUZANNE BARTSCH Baseball caps might be flipped around on rap dancers, but rarely form part of a couture collection. Jones, although a graduate of the Central Saint Martins School of Fashion, has always identified more with London’s club scene. In the 1980s, it was the Roxy or the Blitz Club where Jones gravitated. Not surprising, decades later, his two muses are Princess Julia, a well-known DJ

in London and Suzanne Bartsch, a DJ in New York, who continues to ‘set the rhythm’. “Both have an incredible sense of style, even after all these years,” says Jones. Baseball-style hats have appeared in a number of Jones’ collections, both his own, and for other designers. However, rather than the rudimentary sporting hat, Jones’ version, like Rei Kawakubo’s Winter collection for 2007, featured oversized bunny ears made from black satin.

COLLABORATING WITH REI KAWAKUBO While satisfying expectations for his own collections must be daunting for someone like Jones, working with some of the world’s greatest designers is also enormously challenging. “You have to be a great diplomat. It’s important to leave your ego at the front door,” says Jones. Trying to get inside the designers mind can also prove a mistake. Rei Kawakubo, founder and designer for Comme des Garçons, is a case in point. “I might think a certain hat that I design has a ‘Comme’ feel. It’s those hats that she often doesn’t respond to.

What she wants from me is the ‘spice’ in her collection, creating a ‘bumpy’ ride down the catwalk that almost subverts things, rather than a smooth ride,” says Jones, referring to the success of his bunny eared hats for Winter 2007.

Marilyn, SS14 Carte Blanche. Stephen Jones Millinery. Photo: Peter Ashworth

A few days before each Comme show, Kawakubo makes a selection from the hats she responds to. Those designs are then made in multiples for the parade.

With technology, the process of collaborating with designers has also changed.

In the early days, even before the use of fax-machines (1980s), there was no way of sending sketches to designers such as Rei Kawakubo. “If I was sending a sketch to Rei, it would take at least eight days by post,” says Jones.

Collaborations with other designers, such as Walter Van Beirendonck, are considerably easier to predict. “There’s no holding back with Walter. He has these crazy visions, which explore the edges of pure fantasy. Maybe it’s because

we’re both born in the same year (1957). But we both have a strong almost cartoonish silhouette in our designs,” says Jones. “We both believe that clothes not only protect you, but provide this unique form of self-expression. There’s usually a sense of play in how we present ourselves.”

WORKS OF ART Some hats designed by Jones are unlikely to be seen on the streets, or even attending society dos. There’s his ‘Myra’ hat, created in 2003, which features a doll’s face complete with legs suspended from the crown. There’s also ‘Thunderbird’, designed in 1996 for John Galliano, made from icy pole sticks.

And how could one possibly describe or even conceive the extraordinary ‘Wash and Go’ hat? Designed by Jones in 1999, and made from clear acrylic, the design suggested splashing water around the wearer’s face. Jones used a clear acrylic to create this design, with the ‘droplets’ of the water appearing to defy gravity. “The Wash and Go hat holds a special place in my archives,” says Jones.

Irrespective of whether a hat is destined for the runway in London, New York, or Paris, the design process is never identical. Some designers,

for example, look at several of Jones’ hats before a show. Other designers, such as Marc Jacobs, use accessories such as hats and shoes as the starting point for each collection. “The clothes can then take shape.” Each season Jones takes a new turn, with decisions needing to be resolved. “This is the time my thoughts are literally in constant motion. And these ideas literally don’t stop until the show starts.” When Jones is collaborating with the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier or Walter Van Beirendonck, themes and inspiration on the designer’s mind are discussed. Jones, followed by sketches and toiles, then works up these ideas. “A discussion proceeds over what needs to be changed, from an extra top stitch to a tighter band or a higher feather,” says Jones.

SUMMER 2015 For the last two weeks, Jones has been working on his Summer 2015 collection.

Titled ‘Hot House’, the theme reverts to the club scene, clearly with DJ’s Princess Julia and Suzanne Bartsch in the back of his mind. The 1959 film, Suddenly, Last Summer, based on Tennessee William’s play and staring Elizabeth Taylor, Katherine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift, also play on his mind. Who could forget Elizabeth Taylor wearing a wide brimmed straw hat while taking afternoon tea in an idyllic setting by the water? “There’s a story there, and it lead to something new (in hats),” says Jones. But whether a hat is deemed part of a collection or for a private client, the design process is similar. “You are invariably looking in front of a mirror and adapting the idea, whether it’s the client wearing your hat or a designer suggesting a few changes for their collections,” he adds.

While Summer 2015 is on Jones’ mind, Winter 2015 isn’t far away for those leading fashion, rather than following. “I always put a dossier together which includes all the things that might influence a collection. It could be something seen on the street, a film or even a certain book. Then I head to the workroom and start prototyping using different fabrics,” says Jones. And although many talented milliners in his workroom in Convent Garden surround Jones he still makes many of the prototypes himself. “It’s crucial for a milliner to keep using your hands. It’s the best way of honing your skills.”

own workroom is divided into two sections, separated by a staircase. The rear section is referred to as the ‘soft workroom’, where soft unstructured hats are made and where model hats are blocked. On the other side of the staircase is the ‘model millinery workroom’, where each and every hat is made entirely by hand.

Given his talent and envious position of being in constant demand, Jones could easily please himself and purely design his own hat collections. “I really enjoy delving into other designers’ minds. It’s an extremely intimate relationship. But it also continually challenges me,” says Jones, who enjoys creating the unexpected. For Raf Simons’ first collection for Christian Dior in 2011, the models went down the catwalk with faces void of makeup and nothing worn on their heads. It was only at the finale, in the tradition of the bride, that 30 models appeared wearing elaborate antique veils fashioned into hat-like forms.

ENCORE! While the world has a number of fine milliners, few compare with not only the talent, but also the extraordinary output of Jones, as he moves endlessly across the globe conversing with the designers he collaborates with. The extraordinary retrospective held at the Queensland Art Gallery not only showcased Jones’ brilliance, but also his great depth of knowledge when it comes to the history of the hat, dating back not only to the early twentieth century, but centuries before. To Mr. Stephen Jones, ‘we take our hats off to you!’

THE WORKROOM IN CONVENT GARDEN The workroom is based beneath the salon, a narrow eighteenth-century shop front. The slim entrance with angled steel windows artfully showcases a few of Jones’ fine hats. Like entering a jewellery box, the door opens onto a bright red carpet, appropriate given the number of celebrities that pass through this enviable threshold. Jones’ signature lilac-wash painted walls add to the refined ambience. And behind the shop is the showroom for private clients. However, beyond the ‘stage’ to back of house, is where Jones spends most of his time.

“A millinery workroom is always in an attic or a basement,” says Jones, whose

FOR MORE WWW.STEPHENJONESMILLINERY.COM

Photo: Sølve Sundsbø, Art + Commerce

Photo: Sølve Sundsbø, Art + Commerce

RAF-SIMONS –

By nature, creative people like to evolve and explore, that is a need, a necessity.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

Photo: Sølve Sundsbø, Art + Commerce

TOMAS MAIER –

Luxury products are not only shaped by passion but also by patience.

KATERINA JEBB –

Talking and explaining and trying to find words for feelings, is in itself, destructive to the beauty of creativity.

NICOLAS TREMBLEY –

Collectors do have fun. It allows them to establish a certain distance from the artistic object, to be playful, to apply their sense of humour, to allow their own bad taste to come out.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

3

Plate 01. Photo: Courtesy of Vranken-Pommery

EXPÉRIENCE POMMERY An extraordinary commitment to art and innovation.

ART

By Ray Edgar

THIRTY METRES BELOW GROUND, CARVED OUT OF CHALK AND LIMESTONE, IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST AND MOST UNUSUAL PRIVATE ART GALLERIES IN EUROPE. HERE, AMID 18 KILOMETRES OF INTERCONNECTED RIB AND BARREL VAULT GALLERIES, ART IS SERVED AT AROUND 10 DEGREES – THE SAME TEMPERATURE AS THE 30 MILLION BOTTLES OF CHAMPAGNE THAT SURROUND IT. THIS IS THE DOMAINE POMMERY CELLARS, ONE OF THE MOST SPECTACULAR SETTINGS FOR ART IN THE WORLD.

Since the Vranken family bought Pommery in 2002 the cellars and grounds have been host to annual exhibitions of international avant-garde art. Each year some 135,000 visitors take the monumental staircase (116 stairs) to the cellars below to enter Pommery’s Expérience. The six month long exhibition features between 30 and 40 artists whose work occupies the 110 arched limestone corridors and fills niches beneath chalk bas-reliefs created in the 19th century.

“This place offers a drama that most places with which we’re familiar cannot,” Bernard Blistène, guest curator of last year’s Expérience Pommery told Departures magazine. Blistène, director of cultural development at Paris’s Centre Pompidou, says: “I was struck not by the audacity, but by the freedom that Nathalie Vranken – wife of Pommery’s proprietor, Paul-François – gives the curators she invites.”

TERRY SHOPTAUGH –

Collecting is based on a need to inspire recollection. People collect in an effort to remember and relive the past.

4

Artist Daniel Buren, and French art critics and curators like Regis Durand and Stephanie Moisdon are among the distinguished curators Madame Vranken has commissioned since 2003. This year curator Florence Derieux, together with multidisciplinary designer Matali Crasset who produced the exhibition design, celebrated 30 years of art in the district with Expérience 11. “I choose a curator who I know will pull in the right group of artists of the right calibre

and we go from there,” Madame Vranken told Urban Life. “I don’t choose the artists, but of course I keep an eye on them. If one of them decided to paint everything yellow I will say, ‘thank you very much, but it’s not possible’. I am here to be the protector of what’s possible. I am the common sense.”

Judging by the art in the permanent collection and the exhibition themes, those possibilities are very open. Indeed, despite the historic surrounds and the trappings of tradition, the approach to art is far from stuffy. The same zesty

KARL LAGERFELD –

The best thing to do is dive with your imagination – you can never drown yourself.

flavour, ebullient spirit and joie de vivre one associates with champagne, animates the exhibitions and collections. Yes, that is an acrobatic elephant standing on its trunk, Daniel Firman’s sculpture Würsa. Meanwhile Laurent Grasso’s Truffaut-esque titled neon artwork day for night for day for night suggests either existential ennui or a never-ending party.

Amid ornate 19th century architecture, on 20 hectares of prime champagne producing land, one might glimpse a tree of plastic buckets (Pascale Marthine Tayou’s Talking Tree [2012]), or Stephen Wilks’ carousel of circling deflated animals, Donkey Roundabout (2000). Nearby Philippe Ramette’s whimsical levitating chair appears tethered to the ground, as if fearing it will float away, while Sylvie Fleury’s alien sculpture, Chitonia (2008), seems to have crash-landed.

These works are mementoes of past Expérience exhibitions, which, for the past decade have become Domaine Pommery’s signature event. Each year on opening day a chartered train from Paris Gare de l’Est takes visitors on the 45-minute ride to Reims, the heart of the Champagne district.

The exhibitions regularly play with the setting itself. While a spirit of whimsy floats above ground, down below many of the events playfully respond to the subterranean surrounds: Virginie Barre’s corpulent Batman, Fatbat (2005), leaps through his French ‘batcave’ while there’s a funhouse feel to Theo Mercier and Colin Johnco’s choir of spiral eyed skulls in Expérience 9.

Inevitably such atmospheric galleries conjure allusions to an Aladdin’s cave, an evil genius’ lair, a superhero’s sanctum, the ethnographic curio, the archaeological dig and a general sense of adventure.

Many artists exploit the potential of light in the cellar depths. Jacqueline Dauriac’s Vertigo (2012) disorients viewers’ frame of reference using coloured lights down the tunnels. Richard Fauget’s Opalines lights hang throughout, while a laser beams down in Pierre-Laurent Cassiere’s work The Blue Ray (2011).

But just as many exhibits are drawn to the darkness: as we know darkness has a way of meticulously arousing all of the senses. Using such ordinary objects as metal plates and forklifts Expérience 9 (sound factory) played

HOLLISTER HOVEY –

I think we’re all striving to have these unique living experiences and the antique is one way to do it.

with unsettling industrial noises, conjured clanking Frankenstein experiments and generally nefarious goings-on.

Grand intellectual themes are also explored: Genesis (2004), or Marcel Duchamp’s continued influence in Idiocy (2005) and – this year – the Odyssey (2014). Judicaël Lavrador’s 2006 theme Supernova played on science-fiction imagery and took viewers on a space odyssey evoking space operas, satellites in orbit and mutant invaders.

There have been critical overviews as well. As part of the official program of France’s Presidency of the European Union, Fabrice Bousteau took a look at contemporary creation on the Continent, selecting works by some 50 young artists from every country in the European Union, a testament to its rich, vibrant art scene.

THE LONG TALL HISTORY Corporations have long associated themselves with art, by collecting (Banks such as UBS and Deutsche), commissioning (BMW Art Cars) or sponsoring (you name it).

“We are not engaged in contemporary art simply because it’s fashionable,” Madame Vranken told Urban Life. “We have a great tradition in the field.”

The maison was founded in 1836. During the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century Madame Louise Pommery was a great supporter of art.

Many of these important commissions are in the cellar itself. In 1882 Madame Pommery commissioned Gustave Navlet to sculpt monumental bas-reliefs from the cellar’s chalk walls and had busts made of her by sculptors Leon Joseph Chavaillaud and Henry Vasnier. Another relief was commissioned from art nouveau master Emile Gallé. He carved the ‘grand foudre’ or large barrel for the 1904 World Fair in St Louis, Missouri. Carved from Hungarian oak, the cask can hold the equivalent of 100,000 bottles of wine.

Meanwhile Madame Pommery’s earthenware collection –– drawn from the prestigious centres of Rouen, Moustiers, Strasbourg, Nevers and Luneville, as well as porcelain from Sevres and pottery from Sinceny and Delft ––

WALTER BENJAMIN –

For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?

NIGO –

Collecting is about meeting the items in person.

Neue Luxury, No.2

Plate 02. Photo: Courtesy of Vranken-Pommery

was already famous during her lifetime. It now resides in the Reims Museum, as per her bequest. As for her love of painting, when Jean-Francois Millet’s Gleaners was up for auction and coveted by the United States, Madame Pommery bought it and also bequeathed it to the state (it now resides in the Musee D’Orsay).

“What we want to do is to continue with [Madame Pommery’s] traditions, and to do that we have to have an interest in what’s new and combine that with what she built,” said Madame Vranken. Indeed following in Pommery’s footsteps Madame Vranken commissioned her own bas-relief in the chalk walls –– Daniel Buren’s rather less ornate abstract stripes.

“Louise Pommery was definitely tougher than I am,” Madame Vranken joked with Kunst magazine. “She made Navlet work in the chalk cellars for three years, but I only kept Daniel Buren working there for five days.”

Since acquiring the Pommery brand in 2002, the Vranken Pommery Monopole group has reignited the tradition of art patronage with the company.

Where Madame Pommery pioneered the cellar tour, Madame Vranken combined it with an art experience. Around the world, partnerships with the Armory Show in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, FIAC in Paris and Frieze in London have been established. Art is an essential pillar for developing the company, Madame Vranken has said.

Since starting his own company in 1976, Paul-François Vranken has built up an exceptional cellar of champagne houses. Before Pommery, he acquired Heidseick & Co. Monopole and Charles Lafitte. Together with a collection of exceptional vineyards totalling more than 2,500 hectares – in Champagne, France the Douro Valley of Portugal and the Mediterranean region – Vranken Pommery is the second biggest champagne producer in the world, and the number one producer of rosés.

Two of Domaine Pommery’s claims to fame in the art of champagne making are the invention of Brut champagne in 1874 and the marketing of quarter-litre bottles.

Just as English publisher Allen Lane brought joy to the world in 1935 by creating the Penguin paperback because he couldn’t find a good read for his train trip, six years earlier in France, Melchior de Polignac, son of Louise and Pommery chairman, ushered in a similar revolution – and the perfect accompaniment (when is champagne not?) – when he needed a pocket-sized bottle of champagne to take on the hunt. (It also saved the company through the Depression.) Now marketed as the POP Range it, too, features art commissions - this time on the label.

POP Art encourages international artists under 30 to submit designs for a series of six bottles and the chance to win a 15,000-Euro grant. “It’s becoming really big now,” Madame Vranken told the Wine Report. “These young artists are pushing each other to send in their bottles.” Artists such as Frenchman Olivier Lannaud and Australian aboriginal artist Sarrita King have adorned the bestselling labels. Pommery produces a limited collector’s series of sorts, marketing 30,000 copies of each of the winner’s six works.

At Pommery there’s also a commitment to preserving architectural traditions. At the foot of the Pommery Estate is the magnificent Villa Demoiselle, an art nouveau masterpiece designed by Louis Sorel in 1904.

The villa is the architectural symbol of Reims. A century later, in 2004, Monsieur Vranken acquired the villa and undertook major restoration work. Using the

very best craftsmen the restoration work took almost five years to complete.

It’s in the Villa Demoiselle, the Pommery Cellars and the Carno Cellar above the grand Pommery staircase, that the Domaine’s collection of contemporary art resides, an “essential pillar” of the estate, for the current generation and for the generations to come.

Image Plates Plate 01. Happy Ending Bar, 2010. Anna Blessmann & Peter Saville Plate 02. Nevada, 1974 8mm movie 2’53’’. Charles Atlas Plate 03. The Bronze House, 2013 Bronze, 70x100x70cm. Plamen Dejanoff.

In front of Louise Pommery bas-relief, Jean Barrat, 1986.

Plate 04. Carnot Cellar. Scenography realized by Matali Crasset in 2013 Plate 05. Crayère Notre-Dame. Lisa Oppenheim Plate 06. A monumental, magnificent 116-step staircase connecting the underground world to the outside world.

Plate 07. Expérience #10 : 10 years of experiences, The Ball, Prototype for Gate Valve (2011-2012) Haim Steinbach

FOR MORE WWW.VRANKENPOMMERY.COM.AU Plate 03. Photo: Courtesy of Vranken-Pommery

Plate 05. Photo: Courtesy of Vranken-Pommery

Plate 04. Photo: Courtesy of Vranken-Pommery

KIM A. HERZINGER –

Collecting is a means by which one relieves a basic sense of incompletion brought on by unfulfilled childhood needs. It functions as a form of wish fulfillment which eases deep-rooted uncertainties and existential dread.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

Plate 06. Photo: Courtesy of Vranken-Pommery

MICROSOFT –

Corporate art collections can reveal a great deal about a company and its approach to business.

CHARLES SAATCHI –

If it’s a pleasure where does guilt enter into it.

Plate 07. Photo: Courtesy of Vranken-Pommery

WALTER VAN BEIRENDONCK –

I’m not for the collaborations of designers working with companies. First they were copying designers and now it’s called a collaboration.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

5

FOLIE À PLUSIEURS Perfumes with a methodical madness.

Mood Indigo, Mark Buxton’s scent for Le Cinéma Olfactif. Photo: Alexandre de Brabant

FRAGRANCE

By Dan Thawley

There are few sensations that speak to our collective consciousness the way perfume does – its fragile, ephemeral nuances conjuring both fantasy and memory in our minds and bodies, with layered possibilities shifting between the wearer and those who share their personal space. The ambiguity of scent holds its own fascination, the incongruous experiences of different responders raising questions of reactivity and perception. Do we smell the same things?

Do they evoke the same emotions and feelings?

Creative Director, Kaya Sorhaindo, is re-defining the collaborative and artistic barriers of the perfume industry with his latest fragrance project: Folie à Plusieurs. Translated as ‘madness of many’, the name stems from the idea (and medical condition) of shared delusions. For Sorhaindo it encapsulates the collective spirit of creation within his new brand – where artists make perfumes and perfumers make ‘scent tracks’ for film, introducing a new melting pot of scent-based creation. Sorhaindo’s first projects have included tapping nose Mark Buxton to scent a screening of Art House Director

WALTER BENJAMIN –

Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.

6

Michel Gondry’s film Mood Indigo in Berlin this May and a fragrance with photographer David LaChapelle in the works for September. Neue Luxury spoke with the vagabond creative on the existential significance of the fourth sense and how he plans to celebrate it.

DAN THAWLEY: So, why perfume?

KAYA SORHAINDO: Well rather why me? I ask myself this question many times, because scent is a medium that found me - she chose me. Through the medium, I have been able to expand a way of working as a Creative Director ways. With my client projects it has always been about interdisciplinary collaborations and creating a multi-sensory and emotional experience through perfume I was able to push this even further. This is definitely far from my childhood dreams of being a reggae dancehall singer or a communication and design student in university, but in the end I think the ambitions are the same - to communicate. I am really honoured to be able to create and communicate within the medium of perfumery.

DT: How do you choose your ‘plusieurs’, your collaborators? Do you choose people who push you?

KS: In all cases we definitely look for folie or madness in their work. There are several different olfactory projects and collections within Folie à Plusieurs - each collection has different criteria for curation. Our main Gallery Collection launches in September and focuses on very established artists from a diverse range of disciplines such as performance art, music, film, literature, photography and fine art. For projects like our Olfactive Library, we are working with emerging artists whose work we generally just love. In our Art Department I have a bright young curator named Rita; we are very much aligned taste-wise, but she is constantly introducing me to new artists. This is the beauty of constantly having young talent and energy around me. However, the general principles that we have outlined together and that cover all collections and product collaborations is that the artists must continue to reinvent themselves, are cross-disciplinary, produce a high quality level of work and have made a firm statement in whatever discipline they are primarily engaged.

DT: Who do you want to wear your creations?

KS: For us it is not about wearing a perfume, it is about living them and living through them in the same way that one lives through music, literature, art and food. We are interested in people who understand new notions of luxury and what should constitute a meaningful human experience. We are interested in people that demand more from a product, and use these products to aid larger

MICHAEL MENDELSOHN –

The great innovation for collectors has to be the installment plan.

human pursuits. It could be that person who goes to a Phillip Glass concert or visits an Ai Weiwei show at the Tate, for example.

DT: Where and how is a Folie à Plusieurs perfume created, manufactured, and sold?

KS: We have a creative studio in Berlin and studio in Paris. The concept development and design happens in Berlin, and the olfactory development in Paris - depending on the project we work with different independent perfumers and fragrance houses. A lot of our special projects such as Le Cinema Olfactif with Soho House will be sold exclusively on our website. However, for our main Gallery Collection, each fragrance is created in two parts - the Art Box and the Fragrance Box. The first contains the fragrance and a limited edition artwork by the contributing artist, sold through a very exclusive distribution channel of galleries, museums and one concept boutique per market. The Fragrance Box is purely the perfume, sold at select apothecaries and department stores. Each fragrance in the main line is first launched in a gallery and then in stores a month later.

DT: Tell me about the packaging…

KS: The objects vary for each collection. For example, for the Le Cinema Olfactif Collection (with Soho House & Mark Buxton), each piece serves as a memory box, where you can revisit moments from the film on your own terms, so it is packaged in a small black box with a 12ml bottle and a ceramic applicator. For our main Gallery Collection, two to three scents a year are commissioned by prominent artists, and UNCOMMON MATTERS jewellery designer Amelie Riech will design the bottles to correspond to each artist. The black bottle is encased in a surlyn material so you have the feeling that the bottle is floating, almost like a Damien Hirst sculpture. The casing and the bottle change with each artist, but the bottle remains black with no branding. Once empty, it can be used for another purpose, such as a vase for a rose or ink, etc.

DT: Do you think about the environment when you make your perfumes?

KS: Absolutely. As mentioned, our packaging specifically for the Main Collection is about extending the use of an object, designing it in such a way that it lives far beyond its initial intent. I am really tired of this disposable culture. I believe if you create you should create with meaning and everything should be human and environmentally considered. This is not 100% achievable all the time, but the more you try, the more pieces fall into place and you come closer to the goal/ideal.

NICK CAVE –

Sometimes it crosses paths with what’s fashionable, and then I become obsolete again.

DT: If you were one ingredient of a Folie à Plusieurs perfume what would you be?

KS: It is incense for sure: soft, mysterious and contemplative - but still sensual and accessible.

DT: Do you remember the first olfactory experience that pushed you towards the industry?

KS: I grew up in Antigua in the Caribbean. My mother is a designer who studied at FIT in New York, where I studied too. Although living and working in Antigua, she was well travelled, amazingly talented and an all round super cool lady. She always had the most exquisite fragrances from France and I would sneak a few sprays from her collection. There is a custom in parts of Antigua where if you go to a special event or wedding, you spray a little of your perfume in the air as you walk down the street. You do this for the people you are passing, and if you didn’t do it people would probably talk about you. I so enjoyed this story. I loved the idea of perfume being this thing that was shared and the idea of being able to offer people the luxury of smelling, to be transported to another place.

DT: So you think that perfume should be shared, not protected?

KS: I feel that the medium of scent is social just by its nature and I think this is the beauty of fragrance. As much as you want to keep it a secret, a good perfume, like any brilliant work of art, finds its way to an audience. Whether intended or not, it cannot be restricted and it affects others with whom you come into contact. This is my desire for perfume and partially the inspiration for my brand name Folie à Plusieurs: this idea of sharing a madness, sharing your fantasy, your way of seeing the world.

RICHARD MATTEUCCI –

[Collecting]..is an illness that ought to be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

FOR MORE WWW.FOLIE-A-PLUSIEURS.COM

BRET EASTON ELLIS –

I feel like shit but look great.

Neue Luxury, No.2

Installation photo of Conflict Space, 2006. Graphite on Linen. Image courtesy of The Drawing Center. Photo: Cathy Carver.

LEBBEUS WOODS Experimental Architecture.

ARCHITECTURE

By Kathryn Simon PhD

MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH LEBBEUS WOODS WAS IN 2004 WHEN THE CONFUSION OF 9/11 WAS STILL PERVASIVE. HIS BOOK RADICAL RECONSTRUCTIONS, 1997, FELL OPEN INTO MY HANDS. IT WAS STAGGERING. THESE PRESCIENT CONSTRUCTIONS REVEALED SOMETHING THAT HADN’T YET HAPPENED WHEN THE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED. Woods seemed to possess some profound insight into the complexities of the incident referred to as 9/11 — expressing in drawings what others seemed to pass over/miss/dismiss/minimise choosing to go directly into the catastrophe and consequence — and in doing so miss the event itself. When so many could only utter political stances to cover up the pain, Woods instead expressed the entirety of the event. His drawings were strangely hopeful.

Lebbeus Woods (1940-2012) was an architect, artist and teacher who left behind a rich legacy. Best known for his visionary and experimental architecture and strong social/political positions, he examined life through masterful, and one might say, dystopian drawings. Lebbeus thought and expressed as an architect in the purest sense of the word, proposing interventions and insights regarding contemporary culture, community and more purely philosophical issues. He created spaces to dwell –– almost exclusively intended as drawings

DAVID WALSH –

What we are doing when we collect is overlaying our level of meaning on a symbol system. But because there is a need to impose order it has a very similar motive to religion and id be curious to see if believers tend to be collectors.

8

and models. They suggest complexities, both in what has happened and how to live with what is most challenging, rather than ‘razing’ it by assigning it to a past.

Although known (and hailed) as a brilliant architect and exceptionally masterful draughtsman, he built only one building. Woods was part of a new movement in architecture that began in the mid-eighties that includes Zaha

and build alternative ways to meet the increasing and pervasive issues that have come to mark contemporary life: crisis, instability and change. Due to shifts caused by war/politics, as well as the natural course of the earth’s movement (earthquakes). His ideas took shape through drawings, installations, film, lectures and publications. They opened up possibilities for living with contemporary realities instead of nurturing a culture of ‘marketing’ by

Hadid, Thom Mayne, Diller & Scofidio, Neil Denari, among others. Many architects around this time began to focus on works on paper, models and teaching –– in part caused by the competitive nature of the field and in part because of the entrance that drawing affords one. Lebbeus committed himself to drawing, where he found the freedom his architecture needed — to examine

continually hiding the scars of the inevitable.

What makes his work (in all these mediums) powerful and hard to forget, is their vision, vigor and the uncompromising force around often uncomfortable issues. One gains entrance into a penetrating mind synthesising a profusion of elements (political, social, economic, cultural, etc.) rather than shutting them

ARTHUR SACKLER –

Collecting is an infection which is more intractable than any virus and from which there is no inoculation and no immunity.

FRANÇOIS PINAULT –

Art and the relationship with artists could be a way to stay younger in my mind for as long as possible.

NASSER DAVID KHALILI –

out. The force of these real instabilities in our lives is undeniable. Whether or not we give them our attention, they continue to produce affects.

Lebbeus’ drawings bring one into a sense that is at once teaming, chaotic and orderly. His vision is reminiscent of Piranesi –– in its complexity, and the multiplicity of angles and views that take one into imaginary spaces for dwelling, but would be impossible to experience in a built construction.

There is an inviting ‘thinginess’ to his work, a visceral quality that makes his work compelling and accessible. His drawings make apparent things we experience but are often not visible.

Despite their complexity and technical prowess they are hand-drawn rather than computer generated, which may be why we find ourselves drawn into these worlds. They are strongly suggestive of the kind of work a boy between the ages of nine and fourteen would create. Who instead of growing out of a phase of drawing ships, spaceships, cars and war themes, has moved on to more advanced constructions with more sophisticated ideas to explore.

The recent show at The Drawing Center, New York (April 17 - June 15, 2014) exhibited the work of Lebbeus Woods spanning nearly four decades. The exhibition was curated by Joseph Becker, Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design, Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, Helen Hilton Raiser, Associate Curator of Architecture and Design, San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art. Overlapping the exhibition, Cooper Union held a two day symposium celebrating Lebbeus Woods life with tributes from friends and colleagues — including Zaha Hadid, Thom Mayne, Steven Holl, Neil Denari, Michael Sorkin and Eric Owen Moss.

There is no trace of utopian fantasies, instead one finds an intensely considered response to crisis in cultural, social and political situations

To be given the honour of being called a collector you have to collect, you have to conserve, you have to research, you have to publish, and you have to exhibit.

CARLOS SLIM HELÚ –

When you buy a collection, you have to exhibit it.

Neue Luxury, No.2

Plate 01.

Plate 02.

Plate 03.

questioning, examining and theorizing architecture in places of crisis. Rather than raze buildings destroyed by war, his projects in Sarajavo, Havana and Berlin are considered responses to the scars of war and or political strife, presenting possible ways to come to terms with those conflicts or at least to live with their history, rather than hide them. The dystopian quality of his work is counter to the profuse hope and life that emanates from them. They suggest a future, a continuance, not an ending.

“The shift of focus I have made from objects to fields has not been made simply as a rejection of typological thinking, which dominates the design of buildings; not simply as a rejection of the politics of identity that buildings inevitably work to sustain; nor simply as the rejection of the illusions of authority conjured by buildings, designed and built in the service of private or institutional power. It is a shift I have made in order to liberate in the first place, myself. If I cannot free myself from the reassurance of the habitual, how can I speak of the experimental, which is nothing without real risk, even loss? If I cannot free myself from obsession with the end-product, how can I advocate the revelations latent in the processes of making things? Without freedom from the tyranny of the object, how can I attain the measure of independence necessary to join with others, who, in the making of things, conquer their existence in the first place by their own efforts?

If I cannot free myself, how can I advocate the freedom of others, in whatever terms they might choose?” – Lebbeus Woods, 2004.

Collapse, deconstruction, crisis and intervention are all words one associates with Lebbeus Woods’ architectural and visual examinations, versus the slick high concept building descriptive of most contemporary architecture.

The structures that Mr. Woods builds are the gnarly ones, the result of complications and crisis that are born of 21st century problems. For Lebbeus the act of drawing and creating installations was as constitutive of building as an actual construction itself. Lebbeus accepted instability as part of

contemporary life. He was concerned with how we create spaces in the face of this situation finding ways to include the scars these disruptions have left – not erase them. “My idea of utopia, or an ideal state of conditions for humans, is not based on a harmonious melding of conflicting conditions, but rather the ‘free’ dialogue or open interaction between them. The utopian condition is

one of conflict, achieving a dynamic balance of ideas, actions, forces, through continuous struggle to assert differences of every kind. This idea is based on the belief that the ultimate state of harmony is death.” Visionary and possible… his work is engaged, immersive, experimental - words those in architecture use to discuss his work.

Transdisciplinary and vigorous in his career and output, his work anticipated the strongly interdisciplinary current that is pulsing through all the Plate 04.

Plate 05.

design/creative professions today and the crossovers between them. Trained as both an engineer and an architect his chosen medium was drawing.

While he built only one building, his primary interests and occupation were issues of culture, war, politics and community structured in the language of architecture. Ultimately he understood architecture as a kind of text — with its own grammar and syntax. Lebbeus is hailed by architects, artists, filmmakers and painters for the “conceptual depth, beauty and ‘ethical potency’ that resonate across disciplines.” He was a committed architect in that his focus was on the fundamental activity of the field: to synthesise a diversity of forces (political, social, economic and cultural) into structure and think through the problems of organising and understanding space.

His structures are problematic in revealing the unresolved, not problematic in what needs closure. They take one into the scene of crisis and catastrophe without being dark. His courage is evident in tackling truly contemporary issues of catastrophe, crisis and destruction, which has so far marked this century in distinctive ways. We have now pasted over the postmodern climate.

Terrorism, political changes, war and natural disasters like earthquakes mark contemporary ways of life. What Lebbeus asks us to look at is how we build in consideration of these very real and enduring forces. I feel strongly that the impact his work will have on the next generation of architects will be profound, and that his legacy may perhaps become more visible and known in absentia.

Image Plates Plate 01. Lebbeus Woods, Unified Urban Field, from the series Centricity [no. 37], 1987. Graphite on paper, 24 in. x 23 in. (60.96cm x 58.42 cm). Collection SFMOMA, purchase through a gift of Ned and Catherine Topham and the Accessions. Committee Fund; ˝ Estate of Lebbeus Woods.

Plate 02. Nine Reconstructed Boxes, 1999. Polystyrene. Dimensions variable. Built in collaboration with Dwayne Oyler. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee Fund purchase Plate 03. Lebbeus Woods, San Francisco Project: Inhabiting the Quake, Quake City, 1995.

Graphite and pastel on paper, 14 1/2 in. x 23 in. x 3/4 in. (36.83 cm x 58.42 cm x 1.91 cm).

Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; Estate of Lebbeus Woods.

Plate 04. Lebbeus Woods, Concentric Field, from the series Centricity, 1987. Graphite on paper, 23 in. x 24 in. (58.42 cm x 60.96 cm). Collection SFMOMA, purchase through a gift of the Members of the Architecture + Design Forum, SFMOMA Architecture and Design Accessions Committee, and the architecture and design community in honour of Aaron Betsky, Curator of Architecture, Design and Digital Projects, 1995–2001; Estate of Lebbeus Woods.

Plate 05. Lebbeus Woods, Photon Kite, from the series Centricity, 1988, Graphite on paper, 24 in. x 22 inches, Purchase through a gift of the Members of the Architecture + Design Forum, SFMOMA Architecture and Design Accessions Committee, and the architecture and design community in honor of Aaron Betsky, Curator of Architecture, Design and Digital Projects, 1995-2001. Estate of Lebbeus Woods.

Plate 06. Conflict Space, 2006. Crayon and acrylic on linen. 85 1/2 x 108 3/4 inches San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase through a gift of anonymous donors and the Accessions Committee Fund.

FOR MORE WWW.DRAWINGCENTER.ORG WWW.LEBBEUSWOODS.NET WWW.LEBBEUSWOODS.WORDPRESS.COM Plate 06.

REI KAWAKUBO –

Nothing new can come from a situation that involves being free or that doesn’t involve suffering.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

W.M. HUNT –

The best thing you can do is make yourself available to the experience, do you like it? Listen to your self what are you responding to, it doesn’t have to make any rational sense at all.

DAKIS JOANNOU –

In the art world, someone has to take intellectual responsibility. Price?

I’m not interested in that. I care about value, something no dealer can add or take away. In the long term, time is the ultimate judge.

KARL LAGERFELD –

I throw everything away! The most important piece of furniture in a house is the garbage can! I keep no archives of my own, no sketches, no photos, no clothes - nothing! I am supposed to do, I’m not supposed to remember

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

9

Photo: David Goff

10

Neue Luxury, No.2

MR ANDREA ARTIOLI The new renaissance.

FASHION

by Paola Di Trocchio

In the current landscape of luxury fashion Artioli is something of an outlier.i It remains a thriving family-run business by continuing to do what it has always done: make hand-crafted shoes for men with passion and gusto.

Italian leatherwear in particular is well known for its centuries’ old tradition starting with medieval urban guilds with small workshops producing highquality goods.

Bypassing economic and business trends, Artioli retains a craft and philosophy of a bygone era whilst still catering to the twenty-first century consumer. Wisdom is passed down from father to son, but there remains a continued focus on improved techniques and refined design for its clientele.

I spoke to Andrea Artioli, the CEO, on the phone on a Friday morning.

He was in Tradate, a beautiful town surrounded by mountains, lakes, rivers and forest halfway between Milan and Lake Como, the home of Artioli shoes.

“It is like paradise here” he said.

Photo: Courtesy of Artioli

Photo: Courtesy of Artioli

Paola Di Trocchio: This is the basis of your shoe production?

Andrea Artioli: Yes, we produce our shoes here. We have a strong passion for our area and for our workers. They are true masters. They are the artists of this century, like the artists of renaissance who dedicated their life to art, to paintings, to sculptures, to architecture. The art of this century is fashion, it’s something you can touch and you can use in your life. It’s the new renaissance.

PD: How are they trained?

AA: Usually they start at a very young age, and they stay with us until their retirement. Sometimes they want to stay on and don’t want to retire. They are like members of the family.

PD: And when did you start making shoes?

AA: I’ll tell you a story. My grandfather started at just seven years old. One day he was all alone in the communal garden of the house where he lived, his neighbour saw him as he was preparing to return to work after lunch, collecting his bicycle from the communal garden, and he said to my grandfather, ‘Serverino, what are you doing here all alone?’ When Severino said ‘nothing’, the neighbour invited him to join him. My grandfather accepted. That was the beginning. The neighbor took him to his shop in town where he worked as a shoemaker and that’s how my grandfather started. In the morning he would go to school and in the afternoon he would count down the hours before it was time to go to work. The shoemaker became his teacher and became like a father to him, since his father had passed away when he was four. And because

Photo: Courtesy of Artioli

Photo: Courtesy of Artioli

I knew this story, at the age of seven or eight I asked my grandfather if I could go to work with him in the afternoon, but he made me wait until I was older.

When I turned fourteen, as a gift for my birthday, I asked him if he would allow me to work for him in the factory during the three month summer vacation, and he allowed me to start. I was so passionate.

PD: What are you so passionate about? Is it the craft, the form, the process, the finished product?

AA: Every single step from designing and production to business. I studied design in Milano and I studied marketing together with communication, always preparing myself for my business. But my grandfather and my father were my best professors in business and in life. They transmitted values to me like family, consideration for other people, ethics, the environment and the importance of caring for the environment for the next generation. That is why our shoes are completely natural. We don’t use chemicals in our production.

First of all because of our values, but most of all because we believe that if the product is completely natural, it allows the energy to enter our bodies and to live in a better, healthy and more energetic way.

PD: Has it been difficult to maintain these traditional, family based values and bring them into the twenty-first century when the fashion industry has changed so much?

AA: Yes, it is not easy because sometimes, profits, margins, everything, is geared towards making products in a faster, more industrial and economical way, but I could say that because of the values we have, we can make the best products in the world, even if they are expensive. It’s like a circle. We believe this energy will come back and allow us to live a better life. Sometimes our customers say to me, Andrea, from the time I started wearing your shoes, I feel better, my life has changed for better. I take happiness from this.

PD: You have customers all over the world?

AA: All over the world, including Europe, America, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, in different parts of Asia, all over, because I really like to travel and to get to know new people and cultures. When we design, we think of our customers, each of them with different lives. They are all leaders, but they are all leaders of different fields with varied tastes, therefore we need to make shoes for many characters. I think about my customer and how he will dress and create shoes to match what he will wear. This is why we create different styles, because in many different styles, he will find the one that will perfectly

match his wardrobe. The shoe will match the way he dresses, the way he is and also, the activity he is dressing for. A man dresses differently for business and for pleasure, which is why I introduced the casual shoe, a sneaker line for sport, and then bags and leather accessories to accompany the lives of people and add ease to their life. You know I believe that shoes are like the instrument in an orchestra. The other instruments are like the other parts of the wardrobe and together they have to play the same music.

themselves to do the best they can to contribute well in our society.

There is no better way to be really happy, this is how we believe.

PD: It sounds like your business philosophy and your life philosophy are closely entwined.

AA: We try. This is what my grandfather and my father taught me.

And I’m trying to teach to my three sons.

PD: Are they interested in continuing in the family business?

AA: They are very interested. My older son will spend the summer working with me. He is 16 now and in Italy you have to be 16 to work. This summer my son can finally come to work.

Footnotes i. See Dana Thomas’ Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre for a critique on the transformation of the luxury fashion industry from individual handcrafted good to multibillion dollar corporations.

PD: And all your shoes are handmade?

AA: They are all handmade. But even if they are handmade there is a lot of research into new techniques.

PD: How would you define luxury?

AA: Luxury is the ability to buy the best the world can offer. This is luxury.

But of course you need to have that possibility. Sometimes I feel sorry because I’m not able to offer the same to everyone. I believe that luxury is also to have those possibilities and to do your best all your life, but always to maintain your values. This is another luxury, because in life, if you attain possibility by going against your values, this is not real luxury, this is artificial luxury.

PD: And what about the future of Artioli? Will it always remain a family company?

AA: Yes, I think about Artioli not really as a business, but as an artwork, and if you go public it’s like a virus that will take a business to an economic way of thinking. Instead, I prefer to think of my Artioli as something to share with others, and that we contribute to society in the best way we can, by doing what we know and what we love. When I talk to my children, I tell them to prepare

FOR MORE WWW.ARTIOLI.COM

Photo: Courtesy of Artioli

JUIE WEISS –

Your clothes come from everywhere, and your costumes come from everywhere. They’re made from fabrics and other people’s moments.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

RAF SIMONS –

Fashion is an environment that always embraces individuality and newness.

NICOLAS TREMBLEY –

Collecting is about completing a family of shapes. You’re looking for the missing piece, like a puzzle. If you have all the sizes and variations of the same shape, you have the complete collection and it’s done, the puzzle is finished.

CHERYE PIERCE –

A lot of what you collect starts with where you are.

HENDRA HADIPRANA –

Before making a purchase you must decide where to play – whether you want to be a collector, investor, or dealer.

Each has a different motivation.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

11

Plate 01. Photo: John Brash

12

Neue Luxury, No.2

MURMUR (mûr’m r) ART

e

An installation by Rosslynd Piggott, The Johnston Collection, 2013.

By Dr Angela Hesson

“Murmur” (mûr’m r) n.

1. A low, indistinct, continuous sound: spoke in a murmur; the murmur of the waves.

2. An indistinct, whispered, or confidential complaint; a mutter.

3. Medicine An abnormal sound, usually emanating from the heart, that sometimes indicates a diseased condition. e

AN INSTALLATION BY ROSSLYND PIGGOTT, THE JOHNSTON COLLECTION, 2013 A murmur is by definition an elusive thing, existing in the periphery. Like a shadow or an imprint, the more one attempts to grasp it, the more ephemeral it becomes, its force residing in the realm of suggestion or evocation rather than that of the literal or figurative.

When artist Rosslynd Piggott turned her attentions to Fairhall, the 1860 townhouse once inhabited by Melbourne antiques dealer William Johnston, and today housing his collection of 18th- and 19th-century furniture and objets d’art, it was this sense of the unknowable that most intrigued her. As she researched Johnston and his collection - examining the photograph albums, the folios of letters and postcards, as well as the collection itself - it was the

Plate 03. Photo: John Brash

Plate 02. Photo: John Brash

ellipses, the pauses, the unspoken traces that seemed to harbour the most profound insights into Johnston’s life. Piggott would make numerous visits to the collection over the following months, selecting objects and artworks, and spending hours quietly absorbing the house’s atmosphere.

It was in 2010, at the opening of an arrangement by fashion designer Akira Isogawa, that Piggott first encountered The Johnston Collection. Enthralled by the sensuality of Isogawa’s interpretation of the space and his emphasis on its dreamlike qualities, Piggott began to consider the possibilities that Fairhall might hold for a contemporary artist. Particularly appealing was the freedom and flexibility afforded by the nature of Johnston’s bequest. As a dealer first and foremost, Johnston was interested in the ways in which people live with things, rather than in any intellectualised notion of aesthetic perfection. His approach was more practical than reverent, and accordingly the trust stipulated that the collection should be regularly rearranged, and that it be displayed without ropes or barriers. Visitors are thus able to move freely among the objects, as if in a domestic setting, without the layers of formality and distance usually present in the museum experience.

While few institutions have the benefit of such an accommodating bequest, the contemporary artist’s intervention has become an increasingly prevalent motif of house museum curatorship in recent years. From the grandiose, controversial installation of Jeff Koons’ seventeen sculptures at the Palace of Versailles in 2008, to Elmgreen and Dragset’s understated and darkly witty constructed interiors, Tomorrow, exhibited earlier this year at the Victoria & Albert, the barriers between public and private, history and invention, connoisseurship and kitsch, have been continuously tested, manipulated and undermined. The essentially fictitious nature of the house museum is a notion that preoccupied Piggott from the outset of her project. In this curiously hybrid space, the needs of history must be balanced against those of aesthetics, the desires of visitors against those of curators and artists, and amongst all of this are the often complex needs of the objects themselves, for the most part, never intended for mass exposure.

Murmur is not Piggott’s first experience of incorporating museum objects into her practice. In 1993-4, her major installation, Double Breath (contained) of the Sitter, at the National Gallery of Victoria saw her works symbolically interspersed amongst a selection of stockings, gloves and other corporeally and emotionally resonant objects sourced from the gallery’s Fashion and Textile and Decorative Arts departments. Evoking Susan Stewart’s ground-breaking examination of the ways in which the ‘souvenir’ and the ‘collection’ function as objects mediating experience in time and space, Piggott’s practice is consistently distinguished by sensitivity and delicate attention to nuance.

She has worked extensively with ephemeral media - light, air, sound and scent have all figured in her creations over the past three decades - and accordingly, her intervention into The Johnston Collection is one that plays as much upon the notion of spirit as upon the material object. The eight rooms that house the collection, as well as the spaces between them, are curated with an emphasis on emotional affect. Several rooms have been symbolically ‘restored’ to their original purpose, and while their arrangements and contents may differ from those present during Johnston’s lifetime, a sense of these spaces’ history and the lives lived within them is captured.

Plate 04.

Plate 05. Photo: John Brash

Plate 06. Photo: John Brash

Particular attention has been devoted to Johnston’s relationship with Ahmed Moussa, his Egyptian-born assistant/companion with whom he passed more than 20 years of his life. The upstairs bedroom, where Ahmed slept during Johnston’s lifetime, is all but filled with a carved four-poster bed, on which two toilet mirrors are positioned facing one another, reflections cast infinitely back and forth between them. The effect is both intimate and curiously poignant. In a new work, From B to A, in Colonial Knot, the trailing thread of a pillow embroidered with Johnston’s initial disappears beneath the bed, symbolically connecting this space to his own bedroom, directly below, where the thread of a matching pillow, embroidered with Ahmed’s initial, winds up to meet it. Conceived by Piggott and worked by one of the collection’s guides and former president of the Embroiderers Guild, Dorothy Morgan, the work alludes quietly to the ever-present themes of private affection and public propriety.

Drawing upon the potent olfactory link to memory, Piggott has scented the room with sandalwood, its warm, woody fragrance providing an additional air of comfort and envelopment. In the adjoining upstairs sitting room, an 18th-century portrait attributed to Joseph Highmore has been draped in muslin. The delicate fall of the fabric obscures the sitter’s face while framing her hands, one holding a rose, the other gesturing to it.

and austerity has, perhaps, its own air of affectation, its own particular pedigree derived from the lifestyle of the faded English aristocracy, bumping around the family pile in thrice-darned socks. Whether Johnston emulated this model knowingly is anyone’s guess; his motives, like his relationships, remain elusive. The company he kept was far from aristocratic, and he lacked the education to acquaint himself with the great literary collectors and connoisseurs on whom many better-renowned 20th century aesthetes modelled their tastes and behaviours.

The curious tension between ostentation and parsimony is most emphatically expressed in the rooms downstairs. Here, one moves from the cell-like simplicity of Johnston’s bedroom, with its single bed and unhung stack of portraits facing the wall, to the extraordinary glamour of an adjacent all-white sitting room, complete with polar bear rug and walls of gilded rococo mirrors. A 2009 work by Piggott, Mirror, Mirror, is introduced here - a sensuous, tactile paring of oil and palladium leaf on linen and slumped mirrored glass.

This is a place of egotism and indulgence, both seductive and softly unnerving.

A tipped-over teacup and scatter of playing cards on the floor seem to suggest Johnston’s famous temper. The juxtaposition of the porcelain lip of the cup against the fringe of bear fur evokes, surprisingly and pleasingly, the surrealist incongruity of Meret Oppenheim’s Déjeuner en Fourrure. A stark, plastered fireplace, framed with fluted marble columns, becomes a stage set for three 19th-century mythological Parian ware figures. This white on white tableau was Piggott’s first intervention into the space, its curiously harmonious juxtaposition of understated, even minimalist palette and decorative historicism setting the tone for much of what is to follow.

In the Green Drawing Room, the largest and usually the grandest room in Fairhall, Piggott has created two sections. At one end, a clustered installation of furniture and objects evokes Johnston’s workshop. An upended rosewood sofa table seems curiously personified, its curving legs directed vulnerably ceilingward, making visible its more recent pine additions. In this gently revealing arrangement, even the furniture seems to be surrendering its secrets.

At the other end of the room, the 18th-century mahogany dining table is set for a formal dinner. Directly above it, Piggott has produced a video work, which draws upon the flowering magnolia tree in the courtyard beyond. The work is projected through an elaborate multi-tiered chandelier, in such a way that its shadows and refractions become part of the shifting, transforming image.

A suspended forest of crystal lustres glitters in shades of pink and green.

The series of new printed works that Piggott has produced in conjunction with her arrangement maintain this haunting sense of the fragmentary.

Overlaying archival photographs (many in the negative state) with her own contemporary photographs of blossoms and leaves taken in the garden of Fairhall, Piggott creates glimpses and suggestions of overlapping spaces and overlapping lives. In Murmur – Magnolia Soulaniana, a magnolia appears phantasmically suspended in the canopy of Johnston’s four-poster bed. The brocaded draperies and patterned rugs of the bedroom merge and layer with the dense foliage of the garden and the subtle gradations of pink and white in the curving petals of the flower. In Murmur – Vacances en Paris, Johnston himself appears, posing awkwardly at the Tuileries before Étienne-Jules Ramey’s monumental, menacing sculpture of Theseus and the Minotaur.

An overlayed darkened interior with towering grandfather clock lends an additional aura of memento mori. The effect of negative silvering present in many of these images is at once luxurious and ghostly.

Throughout the house, Piggott provides momentary glimpses of comfort and whimsy. The kitchen is more traditionally decorated with oak, rustic Staffordshire figures and blue and white porcelain. A half-landing bathroom has become an aviary, a veritable rainforest of vibrant 19th-century porcelain birds set against a 1960s wallpaper of silvered palm fronds. A Chinese urn potted with living orchids has been introduced here - a simultaneous gesture to Piggott’s enduring love of these fragile flowers, and to Johnston’s enthusiasm for gardening. Travel was an essential aspect of Johnston’s life as an antiques dealer, and in the landing, a selection of vintage suitcases (lent by the collection’s guides and volunteers) have been stacked to suggest a recent, or upcoming, journey.

Yet despite its extensive preparatory research and numerous allusions to past events and lives, Piggott’s arrangement never lapses into the realm of simple biography. For every reference to some factual aspect of Johnston’s life at Fairhall, Piggott introduces a note of uncertainty; like the new photographic works produced in conjunction with the arrangement, every tableau is veiled, shadowed or overlayed with alternative meaning. Integral to this project is the acknowledgement of memory’s fallibility, of the ways in which histories are written and rewritten. Murmur is a deeply affecting intervention, both tender and incisive, that slips delicately between desire and denial, opulence and restraint, love and bitterness, and emerges as a coherent and immersive meditation on the complex, shifting nature of remembrance, in all its materiality and immateriality.

Across the landing, a gentleman’s study has become a place of melancholy, the flickering chandelier, suspended awkwardly low, barely illuminating engravings of ruins and biblical battle-scenes. The mood of the Yellow Room opposite is altogether lighter - this has been restored to its original use as the flat of Johnston’s friend, Angus Winneke. The sketches and photographs displayed here are taken from Winneke’s successful career as a set and costume designer at the Tivoli Theatre. Throughout Fairhall, contemporary furniture has been sparingly introduced to reflect Johnston’s own taste for juxtaposing the modern against the antique, and here a golden Landscape chaise longue

by Jeffrey Burnett for B&B Italia is deliciously modish against the black and white chequered floor.

The division of Fairhall into flats during Johnston’s lifetime is in itself telling. For all of his conspicuous social and financial aspiration, Johnston’s relationship with luxury was an uneasy one. He would happily commit a month’s income to a piece of porcelain, but he did his weekly shopping at the Queen Victoria Market at the end of the day, snapping up wilting vegetables for pennies. He purchased an extensive country property and filled it with valuable antiques, but refused to turn the heating on. This combination of decadence

Image Plates Plate 01. Splinter - Garden 2012 - 2013 DVD loop projected through 19thc English chandelier in the Green Drawing Room.

Plate 02. Ahmed’s bedroom, including From B to A in Colonial Knot, 2013.

2 x embroidered pillowcases and connecting thread. Embroidery by Dorothy Morgan.

Plate 03. Mirror, mirror no.1 2008 - 2009.

Oil and palladium leaf on linen, hand slumped, sandblasted and mirrored glass.

Plate 04. Murmur - Magnolia Soulangiana, 2013.

Digital print on Hahnemulle paper. Edition of 5, series of nine prints, Murmur.

Plate 05. Detail - The White Room.

Plate 06. Detail - The White Room.

Plate 07. Detail - The Green Room.

Plate 07. Photo: John Brash

ALAIN SERVAIS –

An artist is creating a sign, and the collector at a certain point is taking these signs and putting them together to give another message. He’s making a sentence.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

WALTER BENJAMIN –

Like a child, the collector absorbed by his collection dreams his way not only into a remote or bygone world, but at the same time into a better one.

KIM A. HERZINGER –

Collecting is a passion. And collecting, like most passions, has the capacity to let you live in another world for a while. If I could tell you why passion allows us to inhabit another world, I would stop collecting.

SHIRLEY REIFF HOWARTH –

FOR MORE WWW.ROSSLYNDPIGGOTT.COM WWW.JOHNSTONCOLLECTION.ORG

One of the problems is that people consider a “collection” to be a group of art works in the same room or a gallery. So that word “collection” is a misnomer.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

13

SIX DIMENSIONS OF LUXURY Connecting with the next generation of luxury consumers.

PERSPECTIVE

By Brett Phillips

THE CHANGING FACE OF LUXURY Since the beginning of this century luxury brands have re-defined how they communicate and engage with their audiences. Having long grappled with the changing beliefs of their traditional customers, the emergence of a new and unique generation of luxury consumers has changed the playing field entirely.

As the Millennials (born between 1980 and 2000) start to make their digital presence felt, many luxury brands are redefining their strategies in order to stay relevant in the 21st century. In the late 1990s and early 2000s luxury brands grew exponentially, benefiting from an unprecedented increase in global wealth and the emergence of a mass class of wealthy consumers in the burgeoning markets of Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa and in the traditional markets of Europe and America.

During this period many luxury brands wrestled with two competing agendas – how to protect their exclusivity while increasing their exposure, accessibility and consumer demand. What occurred in the resulting 10 years not only affected the very fabric of many luxury brands, but changed our understanding and relationship to luxury entirely. A new mass-wealthy class emerged and started to trade up to acquire occasional luxury products and services. Meanwhile the traditional luxury consumer started to mix their luxury purchases with more accessible artefacts and experiences.

Image 03. Georges Antoni with 3 Deep for Harrolds.

Image 01. 3 Deep for Materialbyproduct.

This phenomenon encouraged many mass-brands to introduce premium offerings while traditional luxury brands began to introduce more affordable and accessible lines. The resulting effect? A diffused understanding of luxury and a luxury landscape that encouraged the rise of masstige products and consumers. The resulting paradox saw many luxury brands become more important than the products and services that they provided.

Prior to 2007 and the GFC, luxury brands sought expansion and increased market share through product diversification, proliferation and the nomenclature of sub-brands. We witnessed brands such as Ralph Lauren and Armani broaden their consumer base via accessible luxuries such as sunglasses, beauty and fragrance offerings. Rather than follow the existing luxury precursors of scarcity, exclusivity, craftsmanship and cost, the proposition shifted toward a focus on the value and virtues of the brands themselves. The artefact itself was no longer enough.

Since the GFC luxury brands have been forced to recalibrate, with the most successful refocusing product lines, consolidating costly and unmanageable licensing agreements, while reassessing their traditional brand values and beliefs. Burberry and Tom Ford are both notable examples of brands that have engineered a clear and compelling position within market through a tightly controlled and centralised approach. While conspicuous consumption and ‘logo-buying’ dominated the early 2000’s, the last few years have been witness to the most tectonic shift in our understanding and relationship to luxury. Enter the youngest, most socially conscious, self aware and adventurous luxury consumer to ever exist. A consumer focused on the furthest edges of luxury, seeking the niche, the iconoclastic, the new and the next.

THE MILLENNIALS As the engagement with luxury consumers evolves over time, so too does the diversity of the needs, behaviours and characteristics that define consumers purchasing rituals and engagement with luxury.

Much has been written about the rise of the Millennials along with their pending utopian like influence on luxury markets around the globe.

As appropriately captured within Wealth Wave: The Millennials & Their Luxury Aspirations, Danzinger meticulously outlines the pending apocalypse when he states that Millennials “are set to become the largest consumer group in the world by 2020. When this occurs, this group will be aged between 20-40 and will be entering a new ‘window of affluence’ that will resonate for several decades.”1 Millennials may still be young but their disposable income now allows them to engage with the occasional luxury. They are actively seeking to build their own identity through the products they purchase and the experiences they have.

Image 04.

Image 05.

Image 06. Lucy McRae for Broached Commissions. Photo: Lucy McRae.

Within their influential treatise, The Luxury Strategy, Kapferer & Bastien perhaps best describe how the confluence of beliefs, spending power and luxury converge to create a perfect luxury storm when they suggest that “The young iconize luxury brands for they epitomize consumption at its best; luxury is a condensed version of beauty, quality, eternity, humanity, love, self-respect, impressing others, self pampering, self-reward, power, symbolism.”2

While the Millennials are not yet consuming the same volume of luxury as older generations, they are certainly developing their habits and aspirations early. Many have grown up in an age where multiple cars and yearly overseas vacations are perceived as everyday necessities. While much is still to be learnt about the nuances and patina of this influential group, one thing is certain – they are going to behave differently, perceive differently and consume differently to their parents.

to attract new audiences. However, it is perhaps now more important than ever to reassess and evaluate a brands vision and clearly define how it can create a sustainable strategic advantage.

While every brand must define, communicate and demonstrate their unique values, personality and characteristics, we believe there are six vital dimensions that all luxury brands need to consider in order to connect and engage with the next generation of luxury consumers. By grading how well the brand performs against these dimensions and comparing the strategic outcomes against competitors, brand managers and owners can gain a fuller understanding of the relative strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for their brand, while better directing strategic and tactical initiatives.

of function and rationality and into the realms of emotion, aesthetics, hedonism and the sacred.

FROM OBJECTS OF DESIRE TO EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCES. The rules for a luxury brand used to be relatively simple. Be subtle, be exclusive, be surprising and create desire. However, with the rise of The Conspicuous Acquirer, the over-exposure of brands and the democratisation of luxury, volume consumption and brand identity erosion has been the order of the day.

Historically, the luxury brand experience only ever addressed the consumer touch points leading to purchase, with the ultimate goal being to sell a given product or service. Acknowledging the changing attitudes of Neue Luxury consumers and their desire for self-actualisation and self-fulfillment, the customer journey has now expanded to be far more curated and far more enduring.

The purchase is now only the starting point of an extraordinary lifelong engagement for consumers who are seeking a greater emotional connection with brands. The individual consumer is now just as important to the brand as the brand is to the consumer, with each contributing to the canonisation of luxury. Within this context, the customer journey has been re-engineered to create a stronger relationship between the individual and the brand.

SIX DIMENSIONS OF LUXURY In an environment of constant change, the emergence of new markets and the proliferation of new social channels for engagement, it is tempting for many luxury brands to alter their marketing messages or short-term direction in order

1. ARTISANSHIP In this commoditised world, luxury consumers seek out brands, products and experiences that are linked to the artisans that have designed and crafted them.

Whether it be the hand-stitched seam on a Brioni made-to-measure suit or the beautiful imperfection of a Rick Owens chair, we all respond to the human connection behind the products and services we desire.

2. AUTHENTICITY Luxury brands have roots just like human beings have ancestors. All successful luxury brands celebrate a unique lineage and provenance. To be authentic in this context, luxury has to be true, unquestioning and innate.

3. TIME Time is the ultimate luxury. It is the only truly limited resource we have.

As the pillars of service, quality and experience continue to have an impact on a customer’s advocacy for a brand, so too will a brand’s acknowledgment and management of time. By understanding the value of time and its relationship to luxury, brands will better serve the needs of their customers by successfully managing each moment of truth in the customer-brand relationship. This will ultimately give them greater control over the real and perceived value of the luxury goods and services they provide.

4. INDIVIDUALISM A vital ingredient in the projection of a brand’s beliefs, vision and values are associations with the iconoclasts of our age. Celebrated for their commitment to creation and innovation, they also perform a vital function in cultivating fertile ground for their patron’s development of self-image and self-expression.

BRANDS AS CULTURAL BAROMETERS Traditional marketing strategies –– such as artificial celebrity or commercial endorsements –– are slowly giving way to subtler forms of social and cultural engagement. Luxury consumers are now looking at the furthest edges of luxury – seeking the niche, the new and the next. They want to share their knowledge with peers and engage with brands that reflect their own deep and genuine engagement with fashion, design, culture and the arts.

The great influencers and iconoclasts of our time were born of this DNA, and one only has to look to those currently at the helm of the great fashion houses for evidence of the changing attitude toward leadership: Alexander Wang of Balenciaga, Hedi Slimane of Saint Laurent, Raf Simons of Christian Dior and Jeremy Scott of Moschino being a few notable examples.

It is evident that those luxury brands that have the capacity to consolidate their marketing and communications strategies, measure and grade their brand performance against the six dimensions of luxury while accommodating a greater engagement with culture, design and art will not only benefit from an increased strata of luxury consumers, but will inevitably discover new and relevant ways to innovate, connect and influence the next generation of luxury consumers. They will discover what it means to be authentic, and will, in turn, be viewed by their customers and patrons as cultural barometers and custodians of knowledge, integrity and quality.

Footnotes 1. Wealth Wave: The Millennials & Their Luxury Aspirations, Danzinger, 2012.

2. The Luxury Strategy, Kapferer & Bastien, 2012.

Images

Image 01. Materialbyproduct is dedicated to innovating a signature and systematic language for marking, cutting and joining cloth. Authenticity in this context, is at the nexus of tradition and modernity.

Image 02. Phillip Adams, the Artistic Director of Phillip Adams BalletLab is an Australian iconoclast that champions freedom of thought and the luxury of the imagination.

Image 03. Extraordinary is about being unique, without comparison or equal. Harrolds Luxury Department Store embraces the extraordinary as a dimension to project the brands beliefs, values and vision.

Image 04. Rick Owens furniture embraces dimensions of the artisanal and explores notions of the spiritual, the ritualistic and the ceremonious.

Image 05. Dover Street Market is more than a multilevel fashion retailer, it’s a creative playground and cultural barometer that amplifies the dimension of creativity to carve out a unique and competitive position.

Image 06. Broached Commissions are exemplars of a brand that harnesses, manipulates and embodies time.

Not only within the historic framework of their investigation and the fabric of their ideas, but within the ceremony of customer engagement, limited edition manufacturing techniques and curation of artisans and designers.

5. CREATIVITY In order to be creative leaders, luxury brands must explore and occupy the nexus of design, fashion, art and culture. It is the ability to constantly inquire, differentiate, surprise, create and stimulate desire that distinguishes a luxury brand.

6. THE EXTRAORDINARY Luxury brands must continuously strive to create and deliver the extraordinary.

This takes courage, attention to detail and an unwavering commitment to excellence. Within the context of luxury, being extraordinary means overcoming the constraints and limitations of every day life, moving beyond the pragmatics

FOR MORE WWW.3DEEP.COM.AU

Image 02. Jeff Busby with 3 Deep for Phillip Adams BalletLab. Dancer, Brook Stamp.

KARL LARGERFELD –

Fashion is like music, there are so many notes…

You need to play around with them. We all have to…

14

YANG LI –

In your relationships with humans, the ones who are most interesting are those who have a rawness to them, a fragility… that’s my idea of what luxury should be.

CLAUDE LEVÌ-STRAUSS –

Objects are what matter. Only they carry the evidence that throughout the centuries something really happened among human beings.

WALTER BENJAMIN –

The most profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed as the thrill of acquisition passes over them.

NIGO –

I always want to learn more and I do this through collecting different kinds of things.

Neue Luxury, No.2

LUI HON Clothes to collect.

Brooch #Long White, Washi, Silver, 24 x 7 x 4 cm, Nakano Kaoru. Garment: Lui Hon. Tassel Cape Shirt. Wool and leather, hand frayed, 2014. Photo: William Hung.

FASHION

By Stephen Crafti

EACH SEASON WE ARE SOLD A NEW FASHION LOOK. WHAT WAS COVETED ONE SEASON IS RELEGATED TO THE BACK OF ONE’S WARDROBE THE NEXT. BUT MELBOURNE-BASED DESIGNER LUI HON SEES FASHION AS EVOLUTION, NOT REVOLUTION. HON’S APPROACH TO FASHION HAS SEEN HIS WORK FEATURED IN GALLERIES, BOTH IN MELBOURNE AT THE LESLEY KEHOE GALLERIES AND IN THE FULLER BUILDING, NEW YORK. SOFTLY SPOKEN Like his beautifully crafted clothes, fashion designer Lui Hon chooses his words carefully. There are no large arm gestures, as are often seen in this industry, only thoughtful responses to each question. Hon, of ChineseMalaysian descent, arrived in Melbourne in 1999, intent on pursuing a career in fashion. His father, a salesmen, and his mother, a patternmaker in a clothing factory, were against this career choice. His father thought fashion was a career for females to pursue, while his mother, through her own experience, put fashion in the ‘too hard basket’.

turn-around disposable fashion. “It taught me that a garment has to be flattering the moment it’s presented.” Unfortunately, the experience also made him question his own personality, “I don’t have a large TV personality.

I’m relatively shy in front of a camera.” Hon should have taken solace that some of the world’s greatest fashion designers have reflective personalities.

Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo are likewise unlikely to use large body gestures or ‘kiss the air’ at fashion events.

ESTABLISHING A BUSINESS Hon started his own label a year later in 2009, still reflective, but with greater confidence in where he was heading. He started producing two collections each year. In 2010 Luka Maich came on board as Business and Branding Development Manager. “I have a banking background, but I’ve always been drawn to fashion.” My mother’s label (New Zealand) ‘The Case is Altered’ was part of my life from the 1970s through to the 90s,” says Maich. “At that point, Lui was getting help from everyone, but no one, if you looked at the business plan at that time. Clothes need to be beautiful, but the reality is they also need to find a buyer,” he adds.

PERSONALITIES RATHER THAN FASHION While Hon didn’t win the competition, the reality television show provided insight into the commercial side of the fashion industry, featuring quick

BLAKE LIVELY –

There are many different ways you can collect and display art. I normally start with one piece in a room and build a theme or story around it.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

EXPERIENCE BEYOND RETAIL As with the installation piece at RMIT’s First Site Gallery years before, the model at the Lesley Kehoe Gallery brought together contemporary jewellery and fashion for a private audience who would appreciate both creatives. In this context, the lines between art and fashion were blurred. However, within this setting, the two created a dialogue. Kaoru’s sculptural brooches, rings and bracelets, ‘talked’ to Hon’s designs, including his wool and alpaca coat, with its industrial eyelet, from his ‘For Now I am Winter’ collection of 2014. “I don’t want the paper I use to appear pristine. It’s important to reveal the shadow as much as the light,” says Kaoru. The same philosophy could be applied to Hon’s jacket, with its intricate folds. Some of Kaoru’s jewellery featured dyed red edges on the crumpled forms, beautifully ‘dissolving’ into a fitted leather red suit designed by Hon. Other designs, such as a simple black wrap around cape, provided an appropriate backdrop for Kaoru’s large sculptural brooches.

While the combination of fashion and jewellery was a first for Kehoe, so was the experience for those who attended, all by private appointment.

The dressing room, for example, consisted of screens created by artist Maio Motoko, one of Japan’s finest artists. “It was an appropriate setting. I see Lui as an artist rather than a fashion designer,” says Kehoe.

FASHION & ART Hon and the clients who attended, appreciated the ambience of the gallery.

“It’s a unique experience showcasing fashion like art, rather than in the usual retail context,” says Kehoe. Hon also enjoyed the experience. “In a gallery, there’s no pressure to buy and you get to meet the people who created the work,” says Hon, who like Kehoe, believes it’s not about being a slave to fashion. “I see Lui’s design more like sculpture,” says Kehoe, who is interviewed in Hon’s striking raw silk vest with a well-defined silhouette. And while Kehoe was showing Hon’s clothing for the first time in her gallery, many museums and galleries world-wide have built a reputation of showing fashion as art for decades; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, to name a few.

FOLLOWING ONE’S INSTINCTS Hon’s portfolio was accepted by RMIT University’s School of Fashion, which must have disappointed his parents. “You have to follow your instincts. It’s something you feel deeply inside,” says Hon, whose need to explore body and form was initially realised by exhibiting at RMIT’s First Site Gallery upon graduation in 2001. The cavernous gallery featured Hon’s graduate collection as part of a performance piece with dancer Meredith Lewis, who wore his designs and was captured on film. Hon’s honours year project at RMIT in 2003 was equally insightful. With the music of Icelandic band Sigur Ros, Hon lay naked on the floor using the movements of his body to inform possible garments.

PROJECT RUNWAY However, artistic collaborations are usually at odds with the commercial world.

Stints in retail occupied Hon for the next few years, working in high-fashion boutiques, while slowly attracting a small private cliental for his bespoke designs. In 2008, reality called, with Hon being included in the Project Runway series on Foxtel’s Reality Channel. “It was like fashion boot camp,” says Hon, recalling the isolation of being placed in a room and given numerous tasks to complete by midnight to be presented to a jury the next day. “It was all about the look, rather than the quality of each garment. A crudely glued hem or a sheared off edge didn’t mean elimination,” says Hon.

says Kehoe, who could see Hon’s designs working in her gallery combined with the jewellery. “Each enriches the other and as I often remark, ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’.”

KEY BUYERS Hon has found a number of key buyers, including Arida in Sydney, S2 in Perth and Andrea Gold in Melbourne. However, his most refined, gallery-like environment is the Lesley Kehoe Gallery at 101 Collins Street, Melbourne.

Hon’s relationship with this gallery started with an exhibition of jewellery

by Japanese designer Nakano Kaoru. Her exquisite crushed paper and precious metal pieces required a ‘canvas’ on which to be showcased.

A COMPLEXITY TO HON’S DESIGNS Hon’s designs, although sold through select retailers in Australia, are ideally presented in a gallery such as Kehoe’s. Like Kaoru’s jewellery, there’s a complexity to his designs. “I try and leave a pattern unfinished so it can be manipulated on the mannequin towards the end of the process,” says Hon. “It’s that manipulating that delivers the unexpected.”

INTRODUCING HON TO THE LESLEY KEHOE GALLERIES Lesley Kehoe, owner of the Lesley Kehoe Galleries in Collins Street, Melbourne, discovered her ‘canvas’, while attending a private dinner for ‘Supporters of Asian Art’ at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2012. Hon was presenting a slide show of his fashion. “As soon as I saw the images I thought of the synergy between Lui’s designs and Kaoru’s jewellery. Both have this wonderful simplicity of form, as well as the way materials are expressed,”

NEW YORK After the success of Hon’s collaboration with Kaoru, it was a natural progression for both designers to be invited by Kehoe to share their vision in The Fuller Building, a premier exhibition space on Madison Avenue, New York.

“Eventually I hope to have my own galleries in New York and Tokyo,” says Kehoe, who presented both creatives in March this year, as part of Asia Week New York, something Kehoe has been doing with other artists since 1998.

DIMITRI MAVROMMATIS –

When I see something I want I have to have it, and nothing will dissuade me.

SUSAN PEARCE –

Collecting represents one of the fundamental ways in which people use material culture to construct their identity and their social roles.

“Lesley has been showing artists in New York for many years, but it was a first time for me,” says Hon, who found the audience extremely knowledgeable about art as well as fashion. “These women know how to express themselves in what they choose to wear. They are confident in making a statement, whether it’s clothing, jewellery or both.”

STORIES BEHIND THE DESIGNS As important for the New York cliental were the stories behind each of Hon’s designs, as well as the background of Hon himself. “The New York cliental is extremely sophisticated. They may call New York home, but many have come from the United Kingdom and Asia. And of course, there were a number of New Yorkers,” says Hon. One woman, aged in her 70s, bought both Hon and Kaoru’s work, with a large double circled brooch attached to a garment with a scarf/collar. Given the success of the New York and Melbourne shows, Kehoe is planning another show in Sydney later this year. And while people can expect new designs from both creatives, Hon intends to build on designs from past collections.

THE ARCHIVES Titled from the ‘archives’, these designs continue to say something about where Hon is headed. The most recent collection for Spring Summer 2015 was designed with the idea of building a wardrobe. “Fashion can be collected like art,” says Hon. The latest collection also shows a shift in silhouette to a more tailored look, with well-defined waists and fitted sleeves. “I’m also including a number of fabrics that you would find in sporty, casual wear,”says Hon, picking up a roll of perforated mesh sponge-like fabric under a workbench.

“Fashion is like art. It continues to evolve rather than end abruptly after just one season. It’s also about the experience, communicating ideas and having things forever rather than just for the moment.”

FOR MORE WWW.LUIHON.COM WWW.KEHOE.COM.AU

PAUL ALLEN –

You shouldn’t buy a guitar or a painting that doesn’t speak to you in some way.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

15

Image: Courtesy of Sean Godsell Architects.

MPAVILION Pagodas, Pavilions and Contemporary Design.

ART AND CULTURE

By Dr Rebecca Coates

If you travel around Melbourne’s Yarra River and glance across to the skyline on the Richmond side, you cannot miss the arched and glowing rainbow sign spelling ‘Our Magic Hour’. It’s the work of New York-based Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone, commissioned in 2004, and it graces the roof of Naomi Milgrom’s fashion headquarters for the Sportsgirl/Sussan Group which she owns. The installation is part of Milgrom’s contemporary art collection, which champions the work of leading contemporary artists (both Australian and International) in all their variety. The collection is displayed throughout the busy offices – as well as on the roof – of a building suffused with good design principles and natural light (in 2009, the building won the prestigious National Award for Commercial Architecture from the Australian Institute of Architects). The choice and display of the works reflects Milgrom’s active engagement with both business and contemporary art. Her key tenet is that art, architecture, fashion and design should challenge, inspire, (may) be beautiful and change the way we think, live and work.

Milgrom has contributed to these spheres for many years. She has been Chair of L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival, Chair of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), a trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria, and a keen supporter of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image), to name just a few of her broad activities. Her interests extend beyond the arts into medical research (she sat on the Board of the Howard Florey Institute of Medical Research for fifteen years), educational initiatives, and currently sits on the Boards of The Centre of Ethical Leadership and Melbourne Business School, both at the University of Melbourne. Of course, active engagement with established organisations

CHARLES SAATCHI –

However suspect their motivation, however social-climbing their agenda, however vacuous their interest in decorating their walls, I am beguiled by the fact that rich folk everywhere now choose to collect contemporary art rather than racehorses.

16

such as these is an important role, both to share business and managerial expertise, and often to provide financial support. It is a well-established model – but Milgrom regularly transcends it. Not content to support existing institutions, she has also been the driving force behind new and important initiatives and projects.

In 2013, Milgrom presented her first independent initiative, an exhibition

by Belgian provocateur of the fashion/art world, Walter van Bierendonck, in partnership with RMIT University. The exhibition, Dream the World Awake, was presented in the University’s new flagship building, The RMIT Design Hub, designed by architect Sean Godsell, which presides in cool moderniststyle splendor over the northern end of Melbourne’s CBD grid. With Milgrom’s international connections to the global contemporary art world, Tate Modern’s Director, Chris Dercon, opened the exhibition (he has championed van

ORHAN PAMUK –

Real museums are places where time is transformed into space.

MARCEL PROUST –

Bierendonck’s work for many years). The exhibition was only one part of a program of talks, master classes, teaching modules and other related events to engage students. Its legacy was a generation of students shaped by a shared experience of creative practice, design and thought.

In 2014, the not-for-profit Naomi Milgrom Foundation was created as an operational foundation to initiate and develop ambitious projects across contemporary artforms. This form of active support for the arts extends well beyond traditional models and institutions. It fits with current thinking in philanthropy and cultural policy, crystallised by Harvard strategy guru, Michael Porter, that emphasises the creation of “shared value” between government, business and philanthropy. In October 2014, the second of these major initiatives, MPavilion, will be presented in Melbourne with the support of the City of Melbourne, the Victorian State Government and the Australian Council.

Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens are divided from the National Gallery of Victoria and the Arts Centre by a broad avenue and mega tram stops, and are easily overlooked. They are home to John Robinson’s The Pathfinder, 1974, (better known as The Hammer Thrower), the bronze athlete caught in the act of spinning, usually without his hammer, which is regularly stolen. Tom Bass’, The Genie, 1973, a form of Egyptian cat or lion has an oriental gaze and a back and mane so flat that it is an implicitly sanctioned children’s climbing frame. The floral clock, whose kitsch garden planting is changed twice a year, has told the time since 1966 when it was donated to Melbourne by a group of Swiss watch-makers. Numerous other Edwardian or classically inspired statues are set amongst ornamental lakes, sweeping lawns, annual flowerbeds, a trinity of palm trees and a variety of mature European and Australian trees. Pleasant, but often overlooked, the central location of the Gardens butted up against the city’s main bridge and its prized arts precinct – cries out for ambitious

Certainly, it is more reasonable to devote one’s life to women than to postage stamps, old snuff-boxes, or even to paintings and statues.

CHARLIE CHAPLIN –

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

contemporary projects that connect to the city’s artistic network.

The MPavilion aims to fit this bill. Heralded as “a unique architecture commission and design event for Melbourne,” MPavilion has been conceived as a “meeting place for creative collaboration and community engagement - a new type of clubhouse - to enhance the lives of all Victorians” – and, for that matter, the many visitors to Melbourne from interstate and overseas. The project’s scope is ambitious: over four years, four new architectural pavilions will be commissioned as temporary pavilions in residence from October until January each year. Architects will be selected from leading local and international practitioners whose work reflects a passion for innovative and challenging contemporary design.

Internationally acclaimed, Melbourne-based architect Sean Godsell has been selected to design the first pavilion. Godsell’s RMIT Design Hub (2012) clearly influenced Milgrom’s thinking on what outstanding architecture and design can and should do to showcase new and experimental art forms and practices, as well as providing a laboratory space to inspire creative ideas and partnerships. Godsell conceived the inaugural pavilion as a simple steel structure with glazed roof. The fully automated outer skin “blooms like a flower” each day, opening up to create a semi-porous framework to hold a range of events and activities, while at night, it appears like a “mysterious box,” it offers a unique temporary space in which a range of activities can be housed.

The site has been the location for past pavilions, such as the much-loved Botanica and similar events in John Truscott’s Melbourne Spoleto Festivals (1989, 1990, 1991), the precursor to the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

The Melbourne Festival will also partner with this new pavilion, which will be launched when MIAF 2014 opens, and which will house the Festival’s contemporary design program. Where Truscott looked to historic precedents,

W.M. HUNT –

You look at hundreds and hundreds of things and the one that jumps out at you, that’s a really powerful experience, it transcends the notion of how big or little it is.

Neue Luxury, No.2

Naomi Milgrom AO with architect Sean Godsell. Photo: Earl Carter.

such as Chinese pagodas and garden tea-houses, Milgrom has taken contemporary architecture and design as her inspiration.

Milgrom is the first to acknowledge the precedents for a contemporary pavilion created as a temporary space beside a permanent art museum, such as the Serpentine Gallery’s Pavilion commissions. Julia Peyton-Jones, director of the Serpentine and a close colleague of Milgrom’s, has generously supported Milgrom’s development of commissions for Melbourne. The Serpentine pavilions are presented in the central London location of Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park. Rather than spaces to show art, these temporary pavilions are the venue for a range of other activities. Beginning in 2000 with a design by Zaha Hadid, subsequent pavilions have been designed by architects Oscar Niemeyer (2003), Frank Gehry (2008) and Herzog & de Meuron (of Tate Britain fame) (2012); and by artists in collaboration with architects including Olafur Eliasson (2007) and Ai Weiwei (2012). The Pavilion commissions have allowed the Serpentine to circumvent its limitations as a historic tea house turned gallery and expanded its offering to encompass architecture and design through an extended programme of exhibitions and events, attracting a larger and more diverse local and international audience.

There are other variations. Some are intended to be more permanent.

For example, the Viennese based Thyssen Bornemisza Contemporary (T-B A21) commissioned a series of ‘Art Pavilions’ as stand-alone multi-disciplinary installations. Olafur Eliasson and David Adjaye’s Art Pavilion Your Black Horizon (2005) was first presented on Isola San Lazzaro degli Armeni, as a collateral event to the 51st Venice Biennale and was then permanently installed on the Adriatic island of Lopud. T-B A21’s founder, Francesca von Habsburg, is an extensive collector of contemporary art and the pavilions married her interests in contemporary architecture and art. Hans Ulrich Obrist, prolific curator, writer and Co-director of the Serpentine Gallery, described the pavilion model in 2005 as another form, or new institution, to support artists and artists’ projects.

Other permanent examples are becoming increasingly prominent, fusing art, architecture and design as part of a globalized contemporary art world. Art Site Naoshima, in the remote Inland Sea on Japan’s main island, presents a series of house projects by contemporary artists, in empty vernacular Japanese

coastal buildings. On nearby islands, there are a series of collaborative pavilion projects by contemporary architects and artists. These works are characterized by their remoteness and one often views them alone, rather than as part of an opening night crush. Instituto Inhotim, created by mining billionaire Bernardo Paz in Minas Gerais in a remote part of southeast Brazil, is a similar model.

Commenced in the late 1990s and opened to the public in 2006, they offer a unique experience of permanent pavilions commissioned specifically for solo contemporary works drawn from his permanent collection set within a 240 hectare complex of exotic gardens. They are destination art experiences in which the architecture, contemporary artwork and unique location play equal roles. Hal Foster, in The Art-Architecture Complex (2011) noted the ‘experience economy’ of art-architecture projects of this kind and drew attention to the economic cost of creating building-sized artworks and artistically conceived buildings. Such art and architectural collecting needs very deep pockets.

Milgrom’s MPavilion is not a simple replica of these models. Its free-form architecture aims to foster ideas, partnerships and collaboration. The project will work across Melbourne’s cultural landscape, involving the Melbourne Recital Centre, ACMI, the Wheeler Centre, the Robin Boyd Foundation and more than twenty other cultural partners. New technologies and social networks connect its vision and programs to a wider virtual audience. Such initiatives can have a significant impact on regional development. Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class (2002), noted that “the economic and tourist importance of fostering design to stimulate ‘creative cities’ and engage the new ‘creative class’ has been well documented by social researchers and economists,” while the “Bilbao Effect” is now immediately recognisable.

Milgrom is acutely aware of the opportunity to boost Melbourne’s international profile, noting that “if Melbourne wants to position itself as Asia-Pacific’s hub of creativity, culture and design, we need to raise the city’s reputation as a leader in contemporary architecture and design. I know how much interest there is in design and I want Melbourne and Victoria to capitalize on this and share this excellence and creativity.” The stakes are high: according to the Department of State Development and Business Innovation, more than 195,000 people are employed in design-related roles in the State of Victoria, with the sector contributing $7.3 billion annually to the Victorian economy,

The author in conversation with Naomi Milgrom AO. Photo: Neue Luxury

generating an estimated $204 million in design-related exports. MPavilion partnerships aim to showcase Victoria’s thriving contemporary architecture and design sector and create a new legacy of design and creative thinking.

The MPavilion will leave a material legacy as well. Each pavilion is designed to be relocatable and will be gifted to the City of Melbourne at the end of its year. The aim is that they will be a permanent and ongoing contribution to the architectural quality of the city. In some ways this new form of pavilion is the contemporary version of the historic pavilions that grace the Royal Botanic Gardens and the bandstands of many regional towns. Once in their new homes, they may continue to inspire exciting programming that further extends MPavilion’s legacy. Melbourne, Australia, and Richard Florida should be pleased.

MPavilion will be presented by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation in the Queen Gardens from October 2014 to January 2015. This article is based on an interview with Naomi Milgrom AO that took place in Melbourne in May 2014. The author was Curator at ACCA during Milgrom’s period as Chair.

Photo: Neue Luxury

FOR MORE WWW.MPAVILION.ORG Photo: Neue Luxury

Image: Courtesy of Sean Godsell Architects.

WALTER BENJAMIN –

The thing should be noted: the phenomenon of collecting loses it meaning as it loses its personal owner.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

DAKIS JOANNOU –

I didn’t understand collecting at first; it seemed like buying trophies, then I saw the Jeff Koons show, Equilibrium, and immediately put it on reserve.

JIM BARR –

One of the beauties of private collecting is that you don’t need a plan.

SHAKESPEARE –

The apparel oft proclaims the man.

STEPHAN A WYNN –

Collectors suffer from cognitive dissonance… They know that their paintings are worth more than they paid for them and they know that if they sell they can’t replace them.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

17

Photo: Evaan Kheraj. Styling: Alexander Paul.

THE BLACK SOFT Fuck art, let’s dance.

MUSIC

And to think none of this was planned.

mapped out, yet somehow The Black Soft have navigated their way to a place which affords them ultimate freedom. If one day they feel like writing a song, or laying down beats, or producing spontaneous artwork, then there is nothing to stop that flow. They are modern Renaissance men, unshackled by convention and from whatever angle you look at it, they set their own agenda.

“As artists we’ve found our place and are ready to take on responsibilities,” says Joey. “We just get on with work and don’t take much notice of what’s going on in the world. As you can see, we never really leave the studio. And then we find out that one of our tracks is number 2 in the French charts.

I mean, how did that happen?”

They both freely admit that their musical output – a series of widely praised EPs and the current, brutally honest album, The Slow Burn - is not aiming for the pop jugular. And yet almost all who come into contact with it

The Black Soft are the best band you’ve never heard of – two photogenic gay men who could variously be described as musicians, painters and unorthodox fashion mavericks. But Joey Topmiller and Chase Coughlin, who met at college in Tucson, Arizona and now reside in Manhattan, are the epitome of a new breed of artist – uncompromising, defiant and evidently multi-tasking. Their music is not the easiest of listens. It’s been embraced by the fashion world for use in videos, adverts and catwalk presentations, and while not a particularly commercial proposition it certainly is arresting in many other ways. Listening to their dark, throbbing poperettas, or viewing the pair’s subtly compelling art pieces you are reminded of many things, but it’s hard to put a finger on what exactly that might be. As someone who feels vaguely jaded at the thought of yet another synth-duo (Fischerspooner anyone?), and has seen more amateurish painting than he cares to remember, there is much to recommend in their rich, enveloping universe.

It’s an uncommonly warm spring evening in the East Village, and Joey & Chase are burrowed in their basement studio producing music while musing on their place in society. The two late-twenty somethings are nearly always in this space (“obsessively!”) apart from when they’re trawling the neighbourhood’s dive bars, spreading The Black Soft gospel in search of likeminded souls. “We moved here having a false dream,” explains Chase in a speedy mid-Western chirp that’s almost too fast to keep up with. “We felt like we were going to jump straight into this mythical world of Siouxsie Sioux, hip degenerates and the Pyramid club, but it wasn’t quite like that. Don’t get me wrong,” he counters, “there’s a lot of really cool underground things happening in New York right now, especially in the transgender world. To do the transition and become a woman is power and they’ve taken that power and brought it into the nightlife. But we wanted to start a new legacy in New York because no one else was doing it. We’d go out to parties or clubs and it would be like – where the fuck is everyone?”

Having bonded at art college over opera, collaborative painting and limitless expression, the duo reunited in New York, inspired by the city’s historically creative underground. On the face of it, the future wasn’t neatly

are seduced by what they hear. If you’re fed up by the auto-tuned confines of EDM then this could be what you’re looking for. “We sometimes go to a club,” offers Chase, smiling at the situation, “and out of politeness the DJ will spin one of our songs, and everyone seems to stop dancing. It’s like they’re thinking, is this the right time for a cigarette? We look at each other and think, are we doing something wrong? We dance to it, and we have fun, but we’re kind of kooky people. But it’s neat to see people accepting us for who we are because we haven’t tried to write the perfect pop song. We’re just trying to write the music we want to hear.”

Somehow, they’ve found themselves producing oddly powerful electronic music that soundtracks all manner of hip events. Songs such as Torture sound

By Paul Tierney

Electro/fashion/art duo The Black Soft have only been around for three years, but their influence and attitude feels much greater than their relative age.

To listen to Vimeo’s description of the pair one might assume they had spent decades forging an identity. “The Black Soft seeks to change the topography of today’s musical caste system,” announces the streaming site in a fit of hyperbole, “recognising a tangible movement that is percolating in the creative bowels of New York City’s East Village. Artists are collaborating, creation is happening and a new music is accompanying the cries of birth ... the cries that announce the rise of a new dynasty.”

KARL LAGERFELD –

Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress.

If you don’t have it, you are not a person used to luxury.

You are just a rich person who can buy stuff.”

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MICHAEL HOBBS –

I have always been very interested in new ideas and what’s happening with contemporary culture and art has always been an important part of that. I have always been a bit of a collector.

off kilter, behind the beat, almost clumsy, willing you to dance, but tripping you up like a schoolboy prank at every given opportunity. Elsewhere, drums thud out primitive dance floor beats, but layered with art school vocals that owe much to bands like The Rapture and 80s UK nearly-rans The Teardrop Explodes (although this is a band they’ve never even heard of). Weirdly, there is also cinematic scoring, steeped in Bernard Herrmann’s signature Hitchockian strings. Elsewhere, mood and tempo is erratic and ever-evolving. Their sound is a perverse blend: challenging but simultaneously accessible. “With all the things we do, there are different personalities to us,” explains Joey, “and we wanted to make that apparent in the music, and in the way we sing. Our thing is – how can we make them all live in the same world together? Sometimes we feel like singing prettier on one song than another, but then there’s that guttural, sexual thing going on as well. That’s what it’s like in life relationships, and we wanted the music to have a similar mindset.”

It isn’t clear if the aim is to move people at all. “You’re supposed to listen,” cries Chase. “It’s the kind of music I wish I’d had when I was painting and stuff, when I could put on an album like The Beatles or the Gorillaz and draw and create with something audibly solid and adventurous. We don’t want to make background music, but thought-provoking music that questions what you think you like. We often throw in an instrumental piece or a gospel choir to let people know that they like a lot more than they think they do. You know what,” he says, warming to the theme, “it’s so hard to find an album that you can play and listen to all the way through. Like, there’s so much fucking fluff and wasted tracks on certain albums. I think to myself, why did they say yes to this?”

“And we always play with the duality of things,” adds Joey emphatically, “exploring the feminine and the masculine and how they relate as light and dark. We love contrast. We grew up listening to mix tapes, and the idea of a mix tape is a bunch of different things living in the same world. All our songs have a little life of their own. We might sound like lots of different bands, but I would like to think they’re all signed to the same record label. Incidentally, many of our songs are about wanting and searching for something but not getting it. This might sound a little graphic, but it’s almost like a big, beautiful black dick that can never get hard!”

Inevitably, as gay men combining their respective artistic talents, The Black Soft have been compared to many existing duos, gay or otherwise. Swirling around this mix are obvious figures, such as the UK’s enigmatic Gilbert and George, Charles and Ray Eames, Dutch fashion designers Viktor & Rolf and a raft of 80s synth-duos who took their cues from the world of visual art. In some ways, in spirit and temperament, they are the 1980s refined and distilled.

But for all the shared interest in the seedier side of life they are so much more than a latter day Soft Cell. “Gay culture can often be embarrassing,” says Chase. “Ever since I was young I never wanted my whole life to revolve around being gay. It was more that I happened to be gay, rather than gay defining all those things.”

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG –

You can have it all, but not all at once.

WATTERS O. MARTIN –

“We are two gay men writing love songs,” continues Joey, taking the baton and picking up on Joey’s thoughts in a way only the truly connected can.

“We’re not a couple, even though everyone thinks we are – but we wanted to play with sexuality and that fine line, and we wanted to make sure that the music we were making would appeal to everyone. When I was listening to music in the 80s, I didn’t know a lot of it was gay music, but that didn’t matter.

Now I want to make things that a football player might enjoy, or I think, would my brother like this tune? Or my mum?”

The flipside to all this is their art, which, like their music, is textural, linear, but perhaps slightly more accessible. “Joey comes from a very operatic, musical theatre background but was always very passionate and involved in art. My background is in photography and graphic design but I also played music.

We’ve kind of evolved side by side together. Even designing our website together helps us flex our creative muscles. Even when its something that doesn’t relate to music or fine art we think, how do we put our touch on this?

How can we relate it to The Black Soft.”

And the overwhelming monochrome sensibility (all their pieces are in black and white) - why such starkness? “It gives us a defined restriction” explains Chase. “It’s like the universal nature of the music we were talking about, how we want to appeal to our mums and brothers and everyone.

Monochrome speaks to the outsider. We wanted to create a world without restrictions. It’s visually comfortable. Colour can sometimes water things down, so it’s better to project your own colour. In a black and white world everything works.”

As the sun sets on this monochrome landscape (adding a touch of burnt ombre to its edges), the pair begin to dwell on the human condition, sexuality, and personal identity. They also consider metaphysics, which isn’t a subject touched on in many songs, let alone works of art. “The things that we write and paint about are the things that we’re dealing with in life,” explains Joey, as excitable now as he was several hours ago. “We’re getting it off our chests, but its up to you to figure out. All the songs are very raw, they’re not happy and they’re all from dark places: relationships, abuse, drugs, overdosing. It’s trying to find a non-cheesy way of saying the things you really want to. Like, when Helena Bonham Carter’s character says, ‘I want to have your abortion’ in Fight Club. Isn’t that just an interesting way of saying, I love you?”

I collected a lot of things and suddenly wasn’t sure whether I owned these things or they owned me. There’s a responsibility to collecting and taking care of the things you own.

FOR MORE WWW.THEBLACKSOFT.COM

RUSSELL W. BELK –

Collecting is the quintessence of selfish acquisitiveness and possessiveness.

Neue Luxury, No.2

JOHN WARDLE Collecting. Obsession. Architecture.

ARCHITECTURE

By Ray Edgar

Some people house their collections in wunderkammers – cabinets of curiosities.

John Wardle has sheds full of curiosities.

On Tasmania’s Bruny Island, where the architect built his award-winning house known as the Shearers Quarters (it really is a shearers quarters!), Wardle has a 1940s apple shed filled with objects of his affection: chairs, antique agricultural machinery, old apple packaging technology. Nearby, a more contemporary steel shed accommodates further acquisitions.

Back in Melbourne, his office and home are scattered with such disparate objects as Minox spy cameras, printing ephemera and terracotta samples.

Contemporary artworks line his house, while neon – commissioned as artwork, and found signage – surround his office.

For anyone familiar with Wardle’s exquisitely detailed buildings with their controlled views, such an indiscriminate bower-bird approach seems incongruous.

“It’s a random, undisciplined collection,” he admits. “Very much the product of a distracted mind. It’s a counterpoint to doing something singular and refined.”

Yet the collection at times contributes as source material for the practice, he adds. “Either to initiate ideas or demonstrate parallel strands of creative endeavour.”

Not that he claims to do all his buildings alone. While John eagerly enthuses about the social history and arcana of the objects he collects, he is just as quick to declare the lineage within his own work as part of a team effort; both with those within his firm and externally relying on the skills of artisans and experts.

The result of this combined creativity is not just an impressive body of architecture. To his wide-ranging collection Wardle’s firm has also added numerous prestigious Australian architecture awards, including most of the major Australian awards for residential and public buildings. The Shearers Quarters, which won Australia’s highest award for residential architecture, the Robin Boyd Award, (the first of two successive wins) rose from the ashes of a former shearing shed.

“The previous owners took all the history out of it,” he says of the former apple and sheep farm. “They burnt down the old shearing shed, had sold or gave away all the old equipment. It was an amazing property, but had lost all evidence of its own social history.”

Traditionally many Tasmanian farmers planted pinus macrocarpa as a windbreak, he says. “These trees last more or less 100 years before falling over. Farmers get the local miller to mill it and then stick it in the back shed wondering what they’re going to do with it.” Wardle bought up supplies from many sources and transformed the external buffer into an internal shelter. The milled macrocarpa became the interior lining. For the bedrooms he recycled unused apple crate timber sections that had been sitting in local sheds since the 60s after the demise of the apple industry.

A tribute to context and a sense of place the Shearers Quarters also highlights how the spirit of collecting, natural curiosity and respect for social histories inform the architect’s work.

“One of the things many architects do well is use curiosity as the initial

Photo: Trevor Mein

Photo: Trevor Mein

generative process,” he says. “Broadening our bank of knowledge and drawing it into the very immediate research for a specific project.”

At other times the architect will patiently hold onto the inspiration and use it later. Wardle’s obsession with Zagato’s curvaceous and pleated forms on the bodywork of his Lancia Fulvia is referred to on the roof form of the Kyneton House years afterward. Currently Wardle’s obsession with ceramics has led to an immersion into terracotta systems.

Some of his collecting is serendipitous, at other times obsessively staged.

“Every time I travel I keep Sundays free for visiting junk markets,” he says.

“Berlin and Tokyo have wonderful markets, but Ljubljana in Slovenia has the best.”

An anecdote can also stimulate a brief felicitation. Upon hearing that Stanley Kubrick filmed an escape scene in A Clockwork Orange by throwing a Bolex camera out a window nine times before it finally broke, Wardle began collecting the hardy camera.

“I collected about six,” he says. “They exhibit an incredible manufacturing process. They were made in Switzerland from beautiful cast aluminium and leather.” That came out of reading just this one little grain of history.

“I’m frequently interested in things that are actually produced in the place where they were conceived. There is an “authenticity” about them, he says.

“With the agricultural machinery I collect I love the thought that something that was made in the middle of New York or Manchester in the 1850s reflects such significant change in the structure of those cities.”

Despite the brief flirtations there remain several constants in his collecting habits. Art and earthenware are ever present. Indeed of all his collectibles it’s the first object he bought as an architecture student that holds special value.

“It’s this amazing tea pot,” he says. The unusual biscuit and black Danish teapot has two spouts. “You spin it, so it expresses a social aspect of people taking tea together,” he explains. “It’s a remarkable piece of design and I became obsessed by it. It would probably be my single favourite object; the thing you’d rush into a burning house to get.”

WORSHIPPING AT THE ALTAR OF CRAFT If the Shearers Quarters interior is like a beautifully crafted wunderkammer, Wardle has designed similarly inventive joinery – albeit at differing scales – to contain many of the most precious objects in his collection. For the ritual, anniversary purchases of jewellery that he commissions for his wife, Wardle designed a jewellery box on slender, precisely turned foldable legs. As a tribute to the more esoteric craft objects he collects, he made an ‘altar’ piece with custom shaped slots for the objects to lay open in.

Not surprisingly Wardle collects art as well. One of his prized possessions is a work by friend and client Gareth Sansom. The painting features a figure with the word CRAFT emanating like an expletive.

“Gareth’s point was so much art has been made able to exist because of the technological invention of craftspeople creating better ways to etch or produce paint and pigments,” Wardle explains. “So underneath it I arranged a lot of things that are aspects of refined craft, often with a technological underlay.”

Like an altar below the ‘craft’ painting, Wardle set the objects in a specially designed open case. One of them is a 1.5m organ builder’s screwdriver from the 1850s.

“It’s for getting in to the back of church organs,” says Wardle. “I read in the paper one day that Fincham’s – Australia’s oldest organ builder – was

Photo: Peter Hyatt

closing down after five generations of business in Richmond. I rang up Museum Victoria to alert them, then I went to the auction and bought what I could. I bought a serviceman’s box for servicing organs and pipes and various tools and this amazing screwdriver. So I designed this joinery unit that it fits into exactly.”

Next to the screwdriver he placed ceramics by another friend Simon Lloyd – “a remarkable artist, industrial designer and ceramicist.”

“Most of what I like has some form of aesthetic overlay but more often there is a narrative of some aspect of technology or a moment in history or a relationship to a person or field of study that has provided the attraction.

Technically exquisite pieces of ceramic that Simon has made have a higher status than mere craft.”

“We often discuss within our practice about appreciating the skills of others.”

Whether it’s the detailed timber lining in his Fairhaven House (which won his second Robin Boyd Award) or the intricate brickwork on the Nigel Peck Centre for Learning and Leadership at Melbourne Grammar School (which won the National Award for Interior Architecture) Wardle says: “We will cajole and inspire fine tradesmen to do their best work. It’s this great opportunity that architects have to cause other people to do great things. We are facilitators for the exposition of incredible skill by the many who contribute to the process of building.”

So where did this self-confessed “collector slash hoarder” develop the discerning eye for great craftsmanship?

“The number one influence is Ken Burns’ demolition yard,” Wardle says.

The architect remembers spending weekends with his father, an Agricultural Scientist with a passion for history “who was an inveterate finder and hoarder of things” in Burns’ enormous Geelong salvage yard.

“In these massive industrial sheds Ken had catalogued all the bits that had the touch of human endeavour most pronounced on them: the casement windows, the staircases and the finials – just the beautiful exhibits of the human hand over the materials. And that’s where I spent many Saturdays climbing up staircases and clambering over things. I was drawn to that detailintensive appreciation of fine work catalogued in a wrecker’s yard.”

For an architect who makes history with each new building and clings to history by collecting objects with embedded stories, it’s ironic that Wardle feels he himself can’t look back.

“Work demands often contribute to a ‘no looking back’ attitude that can be unrelenting as we complete and take on cycles of projects. It is often these items that form a collection that chart a course through life to record moments of experience.”

“Collecting is luxurious because it’s something I do in those precious moments where I’m not working as an architect. I’ve never sold a thing, ever.

Some people trade or trade up. With me they just move further back into the file. If there’s a decadence there, it’s only the time that it takes to do it. Most of these items aren’t expensive –– but are rich in their value. The manufactured value of a Bolex movie camera is quite extraordinary. The fact that it might cost little now is not the point. I feel it’s an absolute privilege to own something that has not been lost to history.”

FOR MORE

Photo: Peter Hyatt

WWW.JOHNWARDLEARCHITECTS.COM

SOCRATES –

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

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KARL LARGERFELD –

I do my job like I breathe, so if I can’t breathe I’m in trouble!

CLINTON NG –

Collecting is an addiction grounded in a fundamental belief about the deeper significance of what you’re acquiring.

SIMON MORDANT –

We have never thought of it as a “collection” but rather as things we love.

JOHN CUSACK –

What really matters is what you like, not what you are like

Neue Luxury, No.2

MASERATI A6G A grand tour.

Photos: Neue Luxury

DESIGN

By Ray Edgar

Amid the white noise of reality TV and the whining clamour of the wannabe celebrity, it’s startling to find someone with actual accomplishments who prefers to remain anonymous. This is not a new phenomenon, of course.

In fact, it was once admired and aspired to. It was called ‘cool’.

“This is not about me,” says the collector in question. “It’s about an appreciation of history and lineage, provenance and design.” This selfeffacement, I have come to appreciate, is common among Maserati owners.

Yet it doesn’t stop the crowd gathering.

Beguiling them is a silver, pre-production 1956 Maserati GT, designed by Giovanni Michelotti for the Turin coachbuilder Allemano. Hand built a year before Maserati went into full production with the 3500 GT, this, the A6G is, according to its owner, “a little bit unique because it left the factory with full racing specifications”.

Indeed so totally did racing preoccupy Maserati that between 1946 and 1957 the company produced just 137 cars before realising the potential – and economic necessity – of the production sports car. “These are really handmade little jewels,” the owner recalls. “Only 21 were made with the Allemano body, 15 are left and no two are alike.”

He should know: he owns two of them. These incredible cultural artefacts have been in his possession since 2007 and in his heart much longer; bought from the same collector who beat him at auction when he was just 24. “Twelve years later the stars aligned,” he recalls. “The collector needed some money and I was in the right place and the right time.”

The GT – Gran Turismo, or grand tourer – was designed for well-to-do gentlemen (‘whose overcoats are lined with cashmere,’ as Maserati’s history books discretely describe them) who liked to cruise the Continent in luxury, style and – naturally – at speed. The Maserati A6G was considered the finest

handling car in the world at the time. “It’s lusso combined with a fullcompetition engine,” says the collector. “This is effectively a racing car complete with a gentleman’s carriage.”

More than a badge, the Maserati trident honours Bologna with its statue of King Neptune where the Maserati brothers’ journey began in 1914. The trident can’t help but conjure a devilish streak, brought to life most acutely as

you shift between first and second gear. “A sophisticated, wealthy gentleman was not going to want a tractor to drive around. He wants that fire, that pedigree”. The A6G presents an elegant and timeless design signature that was leveraged by Aston Martin and a number of other coach builders in the years that followed. It was indeed ahead of its time.

So what does a collector of (currently half a dozen) exceptionally fine Italian automobiles look for? Pedigree is one thing. “This is a piece of history.

Maserati’s very first Gran Turismo. The owners of Maserati would have driven this very car. It would have been tested by factory racers. The A6G is a fusion of competition pedigree and the most resolved design thinking of the period.

Finely tuned over two years, between the legendary Fangio’s wins in 1954 and after he won races in the 300S. This is as pure an expression of the time as you’re likely to find.”

But as with many collectors, there is a strong personal attachment driving their passion. In this case, one tinged with poignancy. “My heritage is Italian and I’m very passionate about Italian design.”

He confides that he still remembers his first drive in an Alfa Romeo at the age of two. His father died when he was four. “I’m very much my father’s son, but I had to learn the hard way. Growing up without a father was very challenging, being true to yourself and not actually having the road mapped out for you.”

That Italian heritage gave him strength as a young man, he recalls. Today he returns to Italy on business many times a year and regularly drives the A6G in famed races such as the Mille Miglia.

As we overtake through traffic and wind around the bay, two things are noticeable: the engine’s eager growl and the public’s appreciation and turning heads.

As we drive he recalls a decidedly grander tour he undertook with his wife.

“We were in Italy for the Silver Flag race and were to attend a black-tie dinner being held under the stars in the middle of a 600 year old piazza. The A6G was one of the cars to be put on display. Roaring through the hills of Italy from our hotel 30kms away, it was delightful to see so many generations of Italians coming out of the cafes, tipping their hats and smiling as we drove by. The Italians recognise that the car is part of their history, they appreciate its beauty and design and they are very proud of it. It’s very humbling to be a custodian of that kind of object.

“Quite simply, they were the best engineered cars in the world, the most beautiful. They were works of art and they were the most successful. The A6G is very much functional art. It has an ‘X’ factor that you simply can’t quantify. Each has a burden of history and each offers a unique way of seeing the world. A way of recognising the passion of a culture and respecting what was accomplished.

“It’s not just about a badge, it’s about an idea of luxury and the culture that sits behind it. It’s about a unique and identifiable DNA. Similar to what

ROBYN BUNTIN –

After sex, money, enough food and a place or two to live, what is left? Art

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

DAKIS JOANNOU –

I have several one offs and I can collect others’ work extensively. It’s important to do this because you give the collection presence, you don’t just collect masterpieces.

JOSEPH ADDISON –

We see the pernicious effects of luxury in the ancient Romans, who immediately found themselves poor as soon as this vice got footing among them.

draws someone toward a made to measure suit as opposed to something off the rack perhaps. It’s the way it is made, the artisanship invested, the knowledge behind each detail, the materials, the way it feels and the experience derived from it.

Since returning to Italy after several ownership changes – Citroen, Chrysler and now Fiat – Maserati is undergoing one of the great contemporary design renaissances. One hundred years after the Maserati brothers founded the marque, it’s enjoying an era of production success that might almost match its illustrious racing history.

Indeed when the Pininfarina designers took on the task of redesigning Maserati in 2007 they looked to the 1950s, tapping into the dynamism of the long, ebbing and flowing fenders of the 450S and the A6GCS.

Now Maserati’s design has been brought in-house, with former Pininfarina designer Lorenzo Ramaciotti at the helm. “I believe a lot in imprinting,” Ramaciotti says, echoing our collector’s sentiments about recognising provenance and authentic design signatures. Despite the Maserati design centre having fourteen nationalities represented within its borders, Ramaciotti says “The philosophy of a company is woven into its environment. Today, Italian design, more than a passport, is a state of mind.”

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE –

Maecenas sed augue vehicula, mollis nisi eu, scelerisque elit By luxury we condemn ourselves to greater torments than have yet been invented by anger or revenge, or inflicted by the greatest tyrants upon the worst of men.

FOR MORE WWW.MASERATI.COM.AU

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

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