Above: Tim Groen: Jan Taminiau, Amsterdam, 2010.

Jan Taminiau, Designer

Vogue Italia featured items from his collection on a recent cover. Maxima, Crown Princess of the Netherlands, wears his designs. Calls are coming in from Dallas to Tokyo.
I’m referring to Jan Taminiau, designer of super feminine, belabored dresses, who dislikes being called a couturier: “It sounds so crusty, as if you’re talking about the last century.” Jan lives and works in an entire —and entirely beautiful—17th century building smack in the middle of the Red Light District, the oldest part of Amsterdam.
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Above: Tim Groen, Jojanneke Wannabeastar, Amsterdam, 2010

DJ Wannabeastar, DJ/Performer/Musician

Rumor has it that when DJ Wannabeastar shows up at a fashion show in Amsterdam, alarms go off, and security comes rushing to the door.
That is, if the show has fur in it. Jojanneke Wannabestar (as she’s known to most), the underground pole-dancing DJ/performer, has been on a mission to create, in her own words “a counter offensive” against the fur lobby. And it’s working; her voice is being used in PSAs by the Dutch WSPA* affiliate Fur for Animals (Bont voor Dieren), and she has put a fantastically simple campaign together which allows for Amsterdam Fashion Week participants to simply declare themselves fur free during the shows (NY, please take note).
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Above: Tim Groen, Ellis Faas, Amsterdam, 2010

Ellis Faas, Make-up Artist/Founder Ellis Faas Cosmetics

Call me a Dutch chauvinist if you like, but I wasn’t surprised to hear that it took Amsterdam-based make-up maven Ellis Faas to create an eponymous product line which combines—all in the name of practicality, mind you—a highly conceptual approach to the color palette with a touch of Dutch design. The long-time Lagerfeld collaborator and former Biotherm designer draws from colors already present in the body (think blood, freckles, veins, etc), and was inspired by artillery and military efficiency for the packaging.
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Above: Tim Groen, John Bartlett. New York, 2010.

John Bartlett, Designer

Ever since he based a Spring/Summer presentation on Joseph Beuys’ near-death experience, I had been dying (no pun intended) to talk to John Bartlett. The menswear designer was also way ahead of the curve when he explored the shrunken suit silhouette, and while his contract with Liz Claiborne just ended, he has wasted no time (soft-)launching a women’s line “without the fuss”. To cut a long story short, there was plenty of creative stuff I would have loved to talk about with John, but here’s why I changed my mind:
Lately I was beginning to notice that John is putting a lot of energy behind a variety of causes, not the least of which is animal suffering. And I love talking about animal rights even more than I like talking about the influence of Joseph Beuys on fashion.
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Above: Tim Groen, Gerald DeCock. New York, 2010.

Gerald DeCock, Artist/Hair Stylist

“I owe a lot to fashion, for sure,” says Gerald DeCock, who just returned from Florida where he worked on a commercial campaign with Bruce Weber, with whose 1988 Chet Baker doc, Let’s Get Lost, he started his career.
Burned out on agents and mind-numbing mainstream work years ago, Gerald, who started out as a hair stylist, has let his career flow to a place that feels more natural to him. “These days, my work boils down to ‘anything visual’ really,” he explains. “But because I’ve always been picky and selective about the work I take on, it’s not like I’m burned out on hair, either”.
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Above: Tim Groen, Krijn de Koning. New York, 2010.

Krijn de Koning, Artist

One could be perfectly content leaving the first impression of Krijn de Koning’s site-specific installations for what it is; bright, happy, minimalist. But like with most good work, it’s what you think about it after reflecting on it for a bit that makes it really interesting. While his work is super-happy, it is also oblique, complex, formal, surreal…
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Above: Tim Groen, Whitney Pozgay, New York, 2010

Whitney Pozgay
Founder/Designer, WHIT

“Effortlessly chic. Playful but never overly complicated”, is how Whitney Pozgay, founder and designer of WHIT describes her brand new line of women’s apparel. And when I say brand new, I mean so new that Whitney just presented her very first collection, and so new that this is her very first interview as a designer in her own right.
Prior to launching WHIT, the young designer honed her craft working for arguably the two American designers responsible for the current obsession with classic preppiness and outdoorsiness.
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Above, Tim Groen: Selima Salaun, New York, 2010

Selima Salaun
Founder / Designer, Selima Optique

“Look how amazing!” Selima says in her delicious French accent, as she shows me a complimentary write-up about herself in a recent Luxottica brochure. Judging by how happy she is about the kind words in a corporate booklet, you’d never guess that this is the seasoned eyewear designer who receives more editorial than anyone can keep up with, who is the owner of multiple boutiques in New York and a shop in Paris, as well as a thriving business in Japan. And with whom just about every other fashion designer wants to collaborate. From Erin Fetherston to J. Crew, from Tim Hamilton to Proenza Schoeller, from Catherine Malandrino to Jack Spade, Adam Kimmel, Duckie Brown, and Simon Spurr.
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Above: Tim Groen, Felix Burrichter, New York, 2010

Felix Burrichter
Editor / Creative Director, PIN-UP Magazine

“The aim was very simple and almost banal,” Felix answers when I ask what he had in mind when he founded PIN-UP, of which he is the editor and creative director. “I wanted to bring some of the ephemeral qualities, the playfulness of fashion editorial to an architecture publication, and make it entertaining.”

Felix, who was trained as an architect, has always been obsessed with fashion magazines, which is why, when he was still a student, he would intern at a fashion magazine every summer (Numéro, Fantastic Man). “At the time these internships didn’t make any sense, not even to me,” he says, looking back on feeling somewhat torn between two worlds that are traditionally presented in almost opposite ways. “But once I graduated, and was working as an architect, this idea started crystallizing that I wanted to create an architecture magazine that actually wasn’t boring and dry.”

And so the first issue of PIN-UP was created, without a business plan, but with a very clear idea of what the magazine should, and should not be: Lose the heavy-handedness that’s so prevalent in architecture media, and bring on a dose of fashion sprit, in which, as Felix puts it, “there’s no such thing as inappropriate. If anything, inappropriateness is almost desirable.”

Flash-forward about three years, to issue number seven, and all of Felix’ ideas about his magazine for architectural entertainment are still firmly in place. The main change Felix can identify is that PIN-UP is increasingly about design. “Design lies somewhere between architecture and fashion”, he explains, “in terms of shelf life and attitude.” But the reader who has followed the magazine from issue one, may have noticed that contemporary art is featured more and more. Felix acknowledges this: “From design it’s an easy step to contemporary art, and I never thought that that would happen. I was always interested in art, but felt like I didn’t know very much about it.”
Art and architecture are a perfect match, argues Felix, who is excited about the room for experimentation where the two intersect.
“It doesn’t mean that PIN–UP will eventually become an art magazine, but it’s yet another subject that allows for a certain freedom in relation to architecture, and freedom is what PIN–UP is all about.”

I’m personally mildly obsessed with those sections in magazines that ask a person for their favorite things, or better yet, for the “things that they can’t live without,” as ELLE Decor words it. Usually the answers sound pretentious, or embarrassing, or both. And they often pander to the advertiser you see three pages later. Since I have no advertisers to pander to, I asked Felix to list the ten things he can live without (but may decide to keep anyway):

1. Subway Tiles:
McNally did them first, and now, like taxidermy, they’ve slowly crept up all over New York restaurants, presumably to create that slightly rustic edgy charm of yore. I prefer a nice square white ceramic tile any day (like a >Bernd Trasberger< installation)!

2. Plastic Garden Chairs:
I actually don’t mind them so much, the only reason I’m listing it is because it’s part of one of my favorite quotes. A reporter once asked Catherine Deneuve during the Berlin Biennale what she thought was the biggest horror in the world. After some thought that was her answer.

3. Cinnamon and Celery:
There is no dish in the world I can think of that benefits from adding either of those ingredients. The worst to me is cinnamon on a cappuccino, or celery dipped into a jar of peanut butter.

4. Shades/curtains:
I find pitch-black rooms disturbing. Not only do I not mind being woken by the morning sun, but waking up and not being able to see the sky seriously freaks me out. Nonetheless I recently bought shades for my apartment. They’re classic photo studio black vinyl shades intended to shield me from potentially nosy neighbors. (And I have to admit: I really like them and have them down a lot.)

5. Sunscreen:
I wish I didn’t need it, but unfortunately I do. The same goes for glasses, actually.

6. AOL Time Warner Center & Astor Place Tower:
Only two of many examples of how architecture can really destroy New York City’s cityscape and character (and that’s from someone who didn’t even move here until 2003).

7. 43 pairs of shoes (not including sandals or flip flops):
I really don’t need them all, but have very hard time letting go.

8. Ed Hardy by Christian Audigier.

9. Noguchi coffee tables, black Barcelona chairs, and Castiglione’s Arco lamp:
By themselves they’re all amazing design pieces, but combined they remind me too much of the default designer pieces one can find in any low-ceilinged, over-priced New York condo building sample apartment.

10. Dust.

Links:
PIN-UP Magazine

Tim Groen: Felix Burrichter, New York, 2010

Above: Tim Groen, Aric Chen, New York, 2010

Aric Chen
Journalist / Design Critic

“What’s good about moving to Beijing for me is that the shopping’s not great,” jokes Aric Chen, who recently relocated from New York to China ‘indefinitely’—which, he hastens to point out, is not the same as ‘permanently’.

After having served as the 2008 and 2009 Creative Director of 100% Design Shanghai—a co-directorship shared with Tobias Wong, the New York-based artist/designer—Aric felt that a change in perspective would do him good. Beijing had been one of the Asian cities he had visited several times. “Some cities you immediately get, but Beijing was not like that for me,” he says to explain his city of choice. “I could feel that I liked it a lot, but that the only way to really get to know it required living there”.
Beijing, with its “intense moments of beauty, surrounded by vast swaths of grittiness,” reminds Aric of Berlin, another one of those cities that requires visitors to dig a little deeper.

Taking full advantage of his new location, his frequent contributions to the New York Times lately have been about such China-centric topics as hip hotels in Beijing, gay life in Shanghai (‘Panda Bears’!), and a variety of other local finger-on-the-pulse topics.
”It’s interesting, because living in New York, you get used to the idea that our narrative is everyone’s narrative. But now that I’m in China, I’m starting to see how the world is increasingly about multiple narratives. For example, there was no recession there.”

A recent writing assignment gave Aric the chance to talk to Ole Scheeren—the architect working on a number of new projects throughout Asia, including the CCTV tower in Beijing, under Rem Koolhaas’ OMA umbrella—who, Aric says, is very interested in a new model, in which Beijing becomes a center from which new ideas might radiate. And Aric agrees with the architect that it makes sense to think of Beijing as a cultural hub, “in a more poly-nuclear situation.”

Obviously one of these alternative narratives Aric mentions is China’s recent-ish ascendance in the contemporary art world; just think of the media attention for artists like Yue Minjun, Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan. So could ‘design’ be China’s next Big Thing? Aric believes so. “People are talking about design like they were talking about contemporary art seven, eight years ago.”
Which is why the city of Beijing has approached Aric with the request to help them develop a Design Week of their own. This, he predicts, will be very interesting; “There are values in design and architecture which are pretty universal, but because Chinese culture has such strong roots of its own, I have to learn how to evaluate things on their own terms, and from different angles.”

“This is a city where everything happens behind closed doors; it’s a city of walls, and behind each wall you’ll find more walls,” says Aric, so it only makes sense to learn that he lives and works out of a courtyard house he rents on one of Beijing’s old hutongs, or alleyways, near the Lama Temple. He warns me though, not to picture anything too romantic. “When I say ‘courtyard in a hutong’, people expect to find me in some kind of Raise The Red Lantern setting”. The reality, he says, is a little different. “It was decorated by the landlady. So rather than resembling a concubine’s quarters,” Aric laughs , “The house looks like someone’s grandmother’s bedroom.”

In his downtime, Aric likes to stroll along the moat of the Forbidden City—which he fears may sound touristy and quaint—and is generally enjoying the sensation of discovery and surprise that comes with cross-continental relocation.
“I left New York partially to get away from hipness, the latest shops and restaurants, away from nightlife,” he says when we talk about the fact that he’s returning to Beijing in a week, via Milan, and he continues, “I really enjoy the distance, but at the same time I miss all of those things a lot.”
Paradoxically, it is the real New Yorker in him that brought Aric to Beijing, he philosophizes: “It’s that hunger for new things, and for new challenges.”

Links:
>Click here for a beautiful 2008 piece Aric wrote for the New York Times, about visiting China with his mother.<