The other day my friends took me to our usual Emmaus charity shop and I found this beautiful oil painting. The instant I saw her I fell in love ! She is so happy and smiling and she makes me happy too. I paid the huge sum of 5 euros for her! imagine that !
I wanted to add a story here. Some years ago I was head of developement at Kenzo in Paris, it is part of the LVMH group that also owns Louis Vuitton and Dior. I hadn't been there for long when I was given the budget to organise, it was almost a million euros so you can imagine how busy I was! I had about 20 employees in the workrooms and my days were long. One day I got a phone call from Philippe Starck's assistant Thierry asking to meet me to discuss making a CHAIR for Starck !
I of course told him it wasn't my job and he answered that another designer I knew well said that if anyone could make it it was me ! I later learnt that the chair whose stucture was make like a fold up umbrella was made by Starck and he needed to make a removable cover and give it oomph ! Another person had already made an attempt and the delai was now short. Philippe Starck insisted on meeting me before confiding me with his design. I had to escape for an hour, not easy with my working day but we met and we liked each other immediately and I made the chair and he loved it. It was for a store called Target in the US .
A few weeks later he asked me to make a collection of clothes for a famous bath towel manufacturer, clothes that were based on towels ! Conceived made delivered.
After that I was contacted by his prototyper and he asked me ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, I am getting there ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, yes there is a point to this rambling ,,,,,, to make a collection of miniature Louis Vuitton trunks and suitcases with him for the Tokyo super store window. At that point I knew nothing of miniatures and my days were still super busy and my nights were spent in front of the computer doing budget calculations but I still said yes. Yes still crazy!
I had to work out how to make tiny suitcase handles in saddle stitched leather, cover larger trunks in leather ( I wet it and stretched it over a metal base and held it in place until dry ) then add corners. The gold plated trunk fastenings were made by a specialist and unfortunately I didn't think of asking the details ! The logo printed toile fabric also was made up. I had to make a golf bag and golf clubs, then several umbrellas and parasoles followed by a folding bed that fit inside a trunk! This is a photo of the original. I had to hand paint the stripes onto hankie coton to get the scale right. I covered the trunk that was made by the prototyper and lined it to match the bed. My last item was a quilted lining for another trunk and also a fold out ironing board.
The whole project, made at night of course, luckilly I sleep only four to five hours a night, was wonderful and in the end I didn't even ask to be paid ! Idiot ! I was later asked to make all the same ones for another big store but after making 20 leather covered saddle stitched suitcase handles to scale plus two matresses, each with six sections and 16 coton tufts hand done on EACH segment I gave up as my new work contract prevented me from working for another company. It was an experience, my first into miniatures.
Some months later Philippes wife Nori ( then ) phoned me and asked me to make a sexy couture collection for pregnant women and of course I said yes. We worked on the terrace of their South western beach house in the sun and we didn't think it was work at all! The deck ended on the beach and there was miles of sand in each direction. Nori was pregnant and she acted as the model for all the clothes. One day we spent the morning in the big Paris Flea Market looking for ideas then lunching and after sending her home in a taxi ( she was huge with child) she called me to say that she had given birth only two hours later and to come to the hospital. Her hormones kicked her into mother mode and the collection was never finished.
Philippes propotyper Jean Philippe later contacted me again to make ,,,,,,,,,, yes a chair !! for another designer for the Via fair in Italy. The brief was it had to look like it was made out of Bubble Gum !! I made it from bright pink scuba suiting ! It was a tough project and as usual to be done in a hurry.
Another time I was asked to make a five metre high black faux fur teddy bear for the opening of a store in Paris but I said no as I hadn't the space to work in that scale! Talk about crazy oportunities.
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