ABIGAIL AHERN
AT AGENT2, WE ARE WELL KNOWN FOR OUR INSATIABLE PASSION FOR FASHION BUT NOT AS WELL KNOWN IS OUR EQUALLY COMPULSIVE LOVE FOR INTERIORS AND GOOD DESIGN.
DESIGNER ABIGAIL AHERN IS CURRENTLY TICKING ALL OF OUR ‘GOOD TASTE’ BOXES WITH HER UNIQUE PALETTE OF MOODY GREYS AND BRIGHT FLASHES OF COLOUR COMBINED WITH AN ABILITY TO TRANSFORM DULL, EVERY DAY FINDS INTO SHOW-STOPPINGLY CHIC ITEMS THAT WOULD LIVEN UP ANY ROOM.
Her book, A Girl’s Guide to Decorating is gracing our coffee table and fills the reader with inspired ideas of how to add touches of glamour to their homes while keeping a modern yet whimsical look.
I got the chance to speak with Abigail, one of design’s edgiest gurus to talk design advice, fashion and inspiration.
What are on the top shelves of your inspiration library right now?
Oodles of books! Arty books including Marilyn Minter, The Bauhaus & Matisse and interior tomes including The Selby, Dark Nostalgia and A Perfectly Kept House Is The Sign Of A Misspent Life. Oh and back issues, tons of them of different interior mag’s from all over the world.
Fill in the gap, “When I am in my studio I feel…”
When in my studio I feel a squishy contentment. A bit like the feeling you get after that first sip of wine in the evening.
How do you keep yourself organised? Time management is often one of the biggest obstacles for creative minds. Do you have an agenda book and do you make to-do lists?
Rubbish at time management! I flit from one project to the next and there are often times at the end the day that I have the feeling I have dabbled in everything and accomplished nothing. I keep to-do lists on my computer, on endless scraps of paper, which I neatly stack up on my desk but that is about as far as it goes.
What’s your favourite part of what you do?
Designing is by far my favourite thing; to design a collection that is getting snapped up all over the world is the hugest buzz and I have become addicted. I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea. I try and run it past my husband who is none to pleased about the unearthly hour my brain seems to work but I love it.
What is the best advice you have ever received, and what is the one piece of advice you would offer to a young designer?
The best advice: follow your heart and believe in yourself. Living in America taught me to have a much more positive outlook on life and as cheesy as it sounds, a belief that I can create my own destiny and follow my dreams.
The best piece of advice for a young designer would be to travel, to absorb and be influenced and inspired by different cultures and countries. As a designer your work, your vision continually evolves but in order for it to do so you need to travel.
Do you ever have creative blocks? How do you combat them when you do?
I do get creative blocks but nothing that a potter around the garden or a run in the park won’t sort out. I just need to free my mind by doing something utterly different.
Your style is now very recognisable. When working with clients do you influence them or do you bend to their will?
I am incredibly fortunate in that clients that hire me to work with them love my style so there is very little argy bargy. It is a fine line though because as a designer you need to be versatile but at the same time you need to stick to your guns.
The fundamentally important thing is to give your client what they are looking for and at times that could mean changing the current way you think but that’s what makes the job so interesting. Having said that, if a client came to me wanting a Pawson-esque house then no way Jose!! Assess each project as it comes in and if you don’t think it’s the right one for you its way better not to start than to be popping Prozac and drinking whisky in order to get through the project! Believe me I have been there.
What are they key bits of your signature style that could translate into any home?
Colour, colour and more colour! It’s one of the most transformative things you can do to a space and I overdose on it. If you paint your walls dark and then use some high voltage contrasting ‘brights’ for accessories, flowers and so forth you will turn any room from ordinary to extraordinary and its super easy to do.
Your own boutique is hailed as one of the coolest interior stores around. Where do you shop for inspiration?
I travel all the time so there are quite a few stores where I shop for inspiration: Merci in Paris, Rosanna Orlandi in Milan and ABC in New York. No matter where I am I always search out the flea markets as they are often at times are the most inspiring.
Are there any designers that you admire or look to for inspiration?
Kelly Wearstler, Jonathan Adler and Ilse Crawford as well as the Turkish designers Autoban are all a constant inspiration.
We love your faux flower collection, get very giddy about your brightly sprayed pieces of furniture and have just fallen in love with your new lighting pieces here at AGENT2. I have picked out the perfect spot for a bulldog lamp already! I get the impression that if there is not the right accessory for Abigail Ahern that you just make one it yourself. Can the keen design enthusiast adopt the same principals and what advice would you give them to keep things look more chic than shabby?
A lack of desirable merchandise has indeed influenced me in producing my very own range.
I spend vast amounts of time travelling and seeking out new products and when I just can’t find what I am looking for I produce it myself. Also, I am a huge fan of glamorous interiors that have a certain rock ‘n’ roll vibe.
Spray-painting anything from flea market found tables and chairs and mirrors in the glossiest of hues is a fabulous way of adding glamour.
It’s all about thinking out of the box, blending the odd unusual piece with unexpected finishes be that with colour or texture.
As you probably noticed, we love fashion here at AGENT2. Are there any fashion designers that influence what you do?
I do love fashion although being so timed starved I have so little time these days so I stick to what I love; Missoni, Stella McCartney, Giles Deacon and vintage. In Islington where my store is located we have a fabulous selection of vintage clothes stores.
Music plays a big part in our creative process, what would be on your ipod playlist that is inspiring you at the moment?
I am a bit of a creature of habit in the mornings. Radio 4 and NPR from the USA, in the afternoons something like Angus & Julia Stone or Stacey Kent and in the evening Jazz.
What’s next for Abigail?
Next, I am in the process of designing more products, which we are hoping to launch in New York in the summer and Paris in the autumn, as well as designing a 1950s travelling wagon for the most fabulous circus on earth.
Interview Graham Gartside-Bernier
QUINZE & MILAN VS EASTPAK
THEY’VE CEMENTED THEIR HIGH-FASHION CREDENTIALS WITH COLLABORATIONS WITH SOME OF THE TODAY’S EDGIEST FASHION DESIGNERS INCLUDING AGENT2 FAVORITES: RICK OWENS, RAF SIMONS, CHRISTOPHER SHANNON AND GASPARD YURKIEVICH AND NOW EASTPAK HAVE CROSSED INTO THE WORLD OF FURNITURE WITH ITS LATEST PROJECT. THEY’VE JOINED FORCES WITH EDGY BELGIAN DESIGN COMPANY QUINZE & MILAN TO CREATE A RANGE OF SOFAS INSPIRED BY THE UTILITARIAN QUALITIES OF EASTPAK’S OWN COLLECTIONS.
This is a collaboration like it should be done: take the best of both sides and combine. They’ve taken two classic designs by Quinze & Milan (the Club Sofa 01 and Primary Pouf 02) and added the typical EASTPAK element to it. Lots of little zipped pockets have been added to the seats and provide storage for your knik-knaks such as remote controls, laptops and your latest copy of AGENT2 Magazine.
The project is called BUILT TO RESI(S)T and it certainly lives up to its name giving design and functionality in equal measures.
Both pieces are produced in exclusively numbered limited series, and prices will start at £1941 and are available from www.madeindesign.co.uk
Words Graham Gartside-Bernier
VIVIENNE WESTWOOD GOES UP THE WALL
If someone had said that Vivienne Westwood is now taking her hand to interior design, I wouldn’t be surprised. This dame of fashion could do little to surprise any of us, if we’re being honest. But here is the passionate designer, turning her artistic talents to the wall and giving our homes the splash of colour and life you’d expect from a Westwood design.
The legendary British designer (and firm favorite here at AGENT2) has teamed up with Cole & Son to create some of the most elaborate and decadent wallpaper designs that have featured in semi-detacheds for a while. Taking inspiration from her eccentric fashion collections, expect to see wallpapers bursting with pattern, colour and texture.
Launched on 27 September at Focus, this collection won’t be seen on the catwalk or mimicked in high street stores. A truly unique collaboration, purchasing some Vivienne paper is almost as exclusive as getting your hands on her latest fashion pieces. It’s no surprise then that someone with so much talent and eye for design would spread their talents unto something new.
The lady herself has said: “It is good when my ideas get carried over into other artistic media. This collection is a perfect opportunity…to see my ideas from fashion translated into the world of interiors and wallpaper.”
And translate her ideas she has. Some of wallpaper designs are replicas of her most famous and iconic fashion collections from the Squiggle print from the Autumn Winter 81/82 Pirate Collection to Cut-Out Lace print from the Spring Summer 07 I am Expensive Collection, hand-drawn by Vivienne herself.
Most notorious for her forward-thinking designs of British symbolisms, Vivienne’s wallpapers are every bit as patriotic as her clothes. The Union Jack wallpaper is inspired by an antique bleached ship flag; the Striped print is her take on traditional pinstripes of businessmen suits, whilst the Tartan designs have been used many a time in her previous pieces as the quintessential English motif.
Known for taking the simplest of patterns and transforming them into iconic images, over the last 30 years this designer has created fashion movements with her unconventional ideas that have swept the nation and the globe.
Now it seems she’s rather a dab hand at interior design too, creating the most distinctive wallpapers to make your home every bit as bold and alive as her fiery personality and famous flame-red hair.
Words Natasha Al-Atassi Images Cole & Son
PRADA TRANSFORMED
Prada and Rem Koolhaas have unveiled Prada Transformer, a modern art installation to showcase a seriers of cross-cultural exhibitions and events in the Korean capital Seoul. One of the films exhibited is Waist Down – a unique exhibition devoted to the skirt, a medium of infinite fantasies and stories expressed from the waist down. The flamboyant panoply of ideas that can be worked into skirts is presented with the most outstanding examples from Miuccia Prada’s personal collection from 1988 to the present. From season to season, the skirt persists as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the designer. The skirt, for Miuccia Prada, is an ever-morphing means to achieve unique ends of each collection.
Waist Down is a traveling exhibition evolving with each relocation, while always situated at a venue that is not an art space. Waist Down Seoul is the fifth stop on its world tour and is for the first time sited in a space specifically designed for the exhibition that is Prada Transformer: Waist Down becomes a kaleidoscope spread over a hexagonal platform, a planetarium of giant mannequins in memorable skirts.
WAIST DOWN EXHIBITION
The inaugural exhibition was staged in 2004-2005 in the Prada Epicenter in the Aoyama district of Tokyo. The second stop was the famous Peace Hotel in Shanghai, facing both the historic Bund and the futuristic Pudong districts. In 2006 the exhibition shifted to the New York Epicenter in Soho, then to the Beverly Hills Epicenter on Rodeo Drive. Each evolution is interpretative and site-specific, blending existing activities and features of the venue as well as the culture of the host city.
Waist Down Seoul is site-specific in a new way: the exhibition includes skirts and mannequins designed by fashion students from eight design programs in Seoul. Thanks to the earnest cooperation of the faculty of the schools, Waist Down Seoul integrates internationally acclaimed fashion design with seeds of creativity fostered in the host city of Seoul. Beyond the conventional zone of the exhibition, Waist Down at the Prada Transformer becomes a dynamic intersection of global cultures and ideas.
Miuccia Prada selected the skirts in collaboration with AMO. The exhibition design was conceived by AMO to highlight and accentuate Prada’s diverse ideas and concepts.
Words: Graham Gartside-Bernier Images: Prada
DINE IN STYLE THAT’S ‘ULTRA’ COOL
In the heart of Queen and Soho, lays concealed Toronto’s trendiest and darkest secrets. Behind its lipstick-red wooden doors, Ultra’s lavish interior incites passers by tempted in by its affluent design and sumptuous flavours.
Described on its website as an ‘informal playground for dining, cocktails and good times with friends’ the newly renovated spaces on trendy Queen St West re-invents the art of hob-nobbing. Re-designed, Ultra has become an after-work haven for those seeking a style, yet un-stuffy and social atmosphere in which to have a few drinks. Or for those who would prefer a sit-down experience, a chef with a penchant for fusing Japanese and Latin flavours will satisfy your craving for food.
We were seated in a maroon crocodile skin booth, under black patent leather ceiling slats, beside a sea of mirrors. The ornate and lavish décor obviously designed for its new ‘after-work’ clientele. Dividing the dining area from the trendy lounge stands a sheer black curtain printed with giant close-up shots of almost vicious looking red and white roosters. The roosters are a running theme for Ultra – the strutting cocks tying the dark and shiny decor, dance beats and extensive drink list to its unashamed and deliberate brazen, showy vibe.
Ultra’s food ambitiously combines Eastern flavours with Western influences. Chef Zielinkski was trained by Toronto/New York samurai, Susur Lee meaning the Asian influence is definitely strong and in most cases, very successful.
Nevertheless, adding to this social culinary arena, guests are invited to design their own feasts to share. However, leaving creativity in the hands of naïve customers can come with a few misses. And this was certainly the case with our Kobe Short-Rib Spring Roll. This strange combination of deep-frying Kobe beef in pastry certainly reminded us that certain foods should be left in their own original state, and not treated this way. The Tuna Tartarlets and Warm Shimiji Mushroom Salad were both excellent, and the Red Snapper Chips were tasty, if relying a little heavily on the deep fryer. The main courses of Miso Cod and Star Anise Scented Duck Breast were both decent, with the cod the tastier of the two. We sampled nearly all of the dessert offerings, including Mango Gyoza, Vanilla Custard, Lychee Tapioca, Mexican donuts called Churros, and Assorted Truffles. Lucky for us the prices were reasonable with dishes from $8 to $20 (£4 to £10 approximately).
At around 9:30pm, the lounge started to pick up speed as the DJ began turning the beats up several notches. On the opposite side of the poultry curtain, stands Ultra’s interesting and no doubt, exceptionally unique, centrepiece: a long solid oak table with 24 red lacquered chairs. Whilst drinks flowed freely around the aesthetically pleasing prop – which doubles as a catwalk runway – the whole affair seems rather communal for such a disclosed and purposefully pretentious bar. The juxtaposition of community in this cockerel-testosterone fest seemed somewhat unlikely. Again, although the summer rooftop patio and courtyard behind its oversized ornate red doors sits nicely secluded away from bustling Queen St., this element of spring-time sociability is rather strange against its dark, intense interior.
Maybe the cocks were a discreet sense of irony or maybe the theme simply does not work.
A variant array, and a unique Toronto restaurant, Ultra struggles to amalgamate innovative and quality cuisine with an opulent capricious bar, failing short of pleasing both expectant diners and thirty-something singles looking for a few drinks and someone to go home with for a few more.
Words: Jory Groberman
SEXY AT SIXTY!
When it comes to hotels with a difference, the Miss Sixty Hotel is right near the top of the list. With an unusual design and top of the range facilities, it’s right at the forefront of innovative hotel construction.
The hotel is owned by the Italian Sixty Group, who also own the upmarket high-street fashion labels Miss Sixty, Killah and Energie, with 300 stores worldwide and concessions in leading department stores such as Selfridges and House of Fraser. With their clothes famed for their urban, fashion-forward and adventurous feel, it hardly comes as a surprise to find that the hotel is all of these things and a few more.
Situated in the Northern Italian town of Riccione on the Adriatic Coast, the hotel was opened in July 2006, the first of a chain of 4 star hotels owned by the brand. The idea for the hotel was conceived by Studio 63, who have also fitted out many of the Sixty Group’s stores, and the hotel retains the cutting-edge design of the shops themselves. Only here it’s taken one step further. In a pioneering move, each of the 39 rooms across four floors has been individually designed by 30 young artists from all over the world. The rooms are named after the artist who designed them. Though the artists had free reign over their designs, each of the rooms has a retro vibe and the colour schemes are clashing and experimental. The walls are huge canvases filled with futuristic artwork, the light installations are unique and the furnishings are modern. It’s most definitely a place for those looking for something that goes against the grain; the hotel screams high fashion, and it’s anything but subtle.
This is something that’s also reflected not only in the artist’s visions, but also in the facilities here. Each room comes with a LCD flatscreen TV and a wi-fi connection, and there’s also a pillow menu, room service, minibar, laundry facilities, whirlpool bath and a welcome drink. Adjoined to the hotel is a large Sixty store stocking the season’s on-trend clothing and accessories from all the Group’s labels.
Creative Director Wichy Hassons admitted that he found hotels boring, and his aim with this hotel was to create a place where guests would want to come and ‘hang out’. Rather than just a place to stay, the hotel is more of an experience. Webcams are provided upon request by the hotel so guests can make use of an innovative new service where they can chat to each other from their rooms to create a community feel.
The idea of a fashion chain opening a hotel is still a somewhat new one, and guests can expect to pay for the privilege of staying in a hotel associated with a leading fashion brand, but image is everything here and it’s not just an Ikea job either. Everything has been specifically created and the services on offer ensure that guests are looked after. It is hoped that this will be the first link in a chain of Sixty hotels in livelier locations, and while Riccione is hardly Milan, it’s still worth a visit.
Words: Kay Weston
REUBEN WOOD SALON GETS A NEW ‘DO’ COURTESY OF BURNT TOAST
Manchester’s Burnt Toast Design with owner/designer Peter Masters at the helm is celebrated for the elegance of the curved acrylic and bent wood furniture designs he produces. When the mood takes him, he can also produce outsize and visually stunning bold offerings for public use.
Reuben Wood Hair Salon in the Northern Quarter of Manchester city centre has recently undergone a transformation at the hands of the Master(s), providing a worthy showcase for the talents that Masters has combined to establish a functional mix of elegance, funk and hi-tech.
Masters has used his trademark curves on the mirrors, which cleverly conceal the necessary day-to-day products and gadgets used to create the cutting edge designs produced by Reuben Wood and his top-notch team of stylists and colour technicians. The mirrors are removable so the salon interior can be changed whilst still the ambience. Splashes of bright colours, green, pink and blue, balance the larger areas of black and white, making interesting focal points through the reflective walls.
To counteract the reflective surfaces, the rest of the furnishings and décor were kept simple and minimalist to make the most of the available space and to keep the salon looking light, airy and efficient.
Masters’ Horse design was the inspiration for the long blue work surface, which dissects the length of the salon, successfully combining form and function.
Masters utilizes a range of materials, methods and technologies in his designs. He is equally at home when laminating plywood, casting resins and metals, fabricating plastics and upholstery as he is proficient in using a machine specifically created for making violins or when hand-crafting custom designs from green materials.
Words: Eileen Green Images: Reuben Wood Salon
