During lockdown, Kris Van Assche revisits his extensive library, Lucie and Luke Meier rekindle their love for cooking, and Karl Templer unearths a favorite Irving Penn print
Kris Van Assche, Artistic Director, Berluti Kris Van Assche
“Rediscovering my own bookshelves has been a huge pleasure while blocked at my Paris apartment. It’s like shopping in my own library! This is a picture of my library at home, just one out of three places where I keep my books… There are more shelves further down in my apartment and much more in my office at Berluti. I kind of buy books all the time—at exhibitions, when I am traveling, researching- and then often don’t really get enough time to dive into them.
Christopher Kane, designer Christopher Kane
“My rediscovery is Illuminations by Buffy Sainte-Marie; it’s an album that has had a profound impact on my personal and working life. I’d never heard anything like it before or since. Buffy once said, ‘We have to sniff out joy. Keep your nose to the joy trail.’ At this time of uncertainty, nothing can be more relevant.”
Paul Andrew, Creative Director, Salvatore Ferragamo Paul Andrew
“I moved into my apartment in Florence a few weeks before lockdown, and when it started, I still had lots of boxes of books to unpack. Going through them I found my Herbert List books. I hadn’t paid them much attention for years, but when I started to flick through them I quickly became enthralled…His vision of classicism and a sort of Vitruvian ideal of the masculine looks not only utterly modern, but also totally timeless.”
Simone Rocha, designer Simone Rocha
“During this time at home in isolation, I am very grateful for my back garden, and I have discovered seeding. It started with cress but now has developed into radishes, leeks, spring onion, peas, and cucumbers.”
Lucie and Luke Meier, Creative Directors, Jil Sander Luke and Lucie Meier
“We have now been in quarantine in our apartment here in Milan for the past seven weeks, and we have been very fortunate that our local grocer has stayed open and has great products. We have rediscovered our enjoyment of cooking and how appreciative we are to have access to such ingredients. It is a true satisfaction to make your own food every day and one of the basics of life. We are indebted to the incredible people who have ensured that the food supply has been maintained.”
Massimo Giorgetti, designer Massimo Giorgetti
“The future is unwritten….this blanket from the MSGM Fall/Winter 2018 show is my current love-item. As much as it fits my comfy-quarantine mood, it’s a powerful reminder in these uncertain times. It can be scary to say but, even though the future is unpredictable, we have the power and responsibility to decide much about it. I hope we will work our way towards better days, days of hope and positivity. Each of us, together.”
Alessandro Sartori, Artistic Director at Ermenegildo Zegna Alessandro Sartori
Left to Right: “Buffalo 66: one of my favorite movies ever with the extraordinary Vincent Gallo.”
“A vintage piece of clothing: my jacket number one. This is not the first I ever did, but it’s my favorite. It was the starting point of my Z Zegna show in NY, for Fall 2007.”
“A picture of me, 3 years old, and my brother Gabriele, 11 years old, in a small village near our place in Piedmont, both wearing a white shirt and ready for a Sunday family lunch.”
“American IV: The Man Comes Around. I love this vinyl from my Johnny Cash collection. In it there are my favourite 3 tracks: ‘The Man Comes Around,’ ‘I Hung My Head,’ ‘Give My Love to Rose.’
“Playboy 1966, the year of my birth. It belongs to a collection of vintage magazines. Playboy is for sure the one I love the most.”
Karl Templer, stylist
“Sweetie” by Irving Penn 2002
“I bought a print of this photograph many years ago from Pace Gallery, NYC, and I just rediscovered it as it symbolizes such creativity and amazing work. I find it always inspiring and it reminds me why I love style, photography, and great work.” Karl Templer
Earl Cave, actor
“When I was at school, my English teacher told me to read the short story, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (1959) and lent me Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology by Eric S. Rabkin. He told me it was the only story to ever make him cry. I was immensely fascinated by the story of the dumb and heartbreakingly honest protagonist used as a guinea pig for a drug that makes you smart. The story is written in diary entries and throughout the book, you see the increase of sophistication in his writing as the drug advances IQ.
“I never gave the book back to him actually, and lo and behold, I rediscovered it in my childhood home on the shores of Brighton and it made me cry too.” Earl Cave
Laurence Ellis, photographer
“In January this year, I traveled to central Australia. I spent over a month traveling across the country (6000+ miles) to imagine a world without people, as a result of our lost spiritual and natural connection with nature. Through this time, I photographed landscapes without human life. Imagining what this empty planet may look like, whilst inversely documenting its natural beauty and life.
I returned to a world, forcibly emptied and isolated. Not in the way I imagined but still through a natural occurrence. I’m now left with these empty landscapes, from another time. I look at them daily, I try and make sense of them and take solace in them. As dream time, they are both our past, present, and future. This is all I understand.” Laurence Ellis
Camille Bidault-Waddington, stylist Camille Bidault-Waddington
“While digging in my home… a VHS tape of that film and Margiela gloves….How to think different, how the imagination of things can inspire out of reality, constant speleo searches. Something tender.”
Alice Goddard, stylist Alice Goddard
“I’ve been revisiting Murder She Wrote, one of my favorite TV shows. I’m getting increasingly better at working out who dun it.”
Laura Palmieri, Creative Director at Erika Cavallini
“Gianni Berengo Gardin realizzò nel 2014 un progetto sul nostro archivio e sulla nostra azienda, che poi diede forma ad un volume pubblicato dall’agenzia Contrasto. Attraverso le sue immagini veniva rivelato il ‘dietro le quinte’ del processo creativo, il culto del fatto a mano, l’attenzione al dettaglio, la gioia della lentezza e il piacere della ricerca di valori antichi decisamente senza tempo.”
Gianni Berengo Gardin in 2014 realized a project on our archive and company, which then he gave shape in a book published by Contrasto agency. Through his images, the ‘behind the scenes’ of the creative process was discovered the cult of the handmade, attention to details, the joy of slowness, and the pleasure of the timeless values.” Laura Palmieri
Danielle Neu, photographer Danielle Nue
“I’ve watched John Huston’s The Misfits twice during quarantine. This film is just my type of movie; the existential and nihilistic cowboy runs rampant, screaming soliloquies that others hardly hear. Marilyn Monroe is cast as the angelic savior, a woman to save all of the lonesome and broken men out on the range. She is magnetic on the silver screen. There is this reckless sense of freedom that runs through the whole film, and that attracts me while I’m stuck at home in my apartment in the city.”
Theo Sion, photographer Theo Sion
“I’ve been re-reading Neil Tennant’s One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem. I love reading about the genesis of his ideas—for example, the title and suggestive imagery in the lyrics for ‘The Truck-Driver and His Mate’ are based on a late-’70s Yorkie chocolate bar slogan that Neil may or may not have imagined.”
Duane Michals, photographer Duane Michals
“I recently rediscovered artist Sonia Terk Delaunay. She was Robert Delaunay’s wife, and I didn’t realize how truly great she was, being overshadowed by his fame. Look her up!”
Markn, photographer
“I’ve been rediscovering a love for reading. I’m one of those people that needs time to fully immerse myself in books without any distractions so isolation has allowed me to spend hours reading while also researching new photographic projects. Having a strong feminist flatmate has influenced me to read the following books which I’d recommend to everyone. The books help you face the world as it is now and see how unjust the social system is and the harm this causes to all of us.”
Come as You: Are The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski. Markn
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez.
Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chema
Sharna Osborne, photographer Sharna Osborne
“Via Fondazione Prada’s catalogue for ‘Dal Vivo’ and multiple listens of Philip Glass Ensemble’s Einstein on the Beach, I have once again spent loads of time listening to, reading, and thinking about Laurie Anderson. Even just her storytelling blows my mind—it’s magic and also very childlike, and I don’t think I could ever be immune to its effects.”
Esther Theaker, photographer Esther Theaker
“It’s nice to do something so immediate, drawing while you’re doing other things. In that way it’s therapeutic, less cerebral, which is something I’ve definitely been craving.”
