Everything Has to Come At the Right Moment: An Interview of Francisco Costa

From Calvin Klein to sustainable skincare, the maternal gaze is a guiding principle for Brazil’s prodigal son.

 
 

interview by Summer Bowie
portraits by Keith Oshiro


Francisco Costa’s path from the rarefied world of high fashion to the heart of the Amazon is a story of return—both to his geographical roots and to a practice that prioritizes community care by design. Born in the small town of Guarani, Brazil, Costa was raised by a visionary mother who ran a garment factory that empowered hundreds of local women and modeled what would now be considered a quietly radical form of sustainability.

Shortly after losing his mother during his adolescence, the budding young designer moved to New York to study fashion at FIT. An early and formative experience working for a Seventh Avenue garment manufacturer who held licenses for major designers, including Oscar de la Renta, led to Costa eventually working directly under de la Renta, becoming part of his atelier and learning the foundations of luxury design and craftsmanship. This apprenticeship was pivotal—it exposed Costa to the world of refined, couture-level design and helped him develop the precision and discipline that would later define his own minimalist aesthetic.

In the late 1990s, Costa moved to Gucci, where he worked under Tom Ford. This period helped sharpen his sense of modernity, sex appeal, and branding. Best known for his decade-long tenure as the Women’s Creative Director at Calvin Klein, Costa became a defining voice in modern reductionism—an editor of excess, who found beauty in restraint. But even then, his instinct was to reuse, reimagine, and reconnect with materials in deeply personal ways. All along the way, his mother’s ethics of care and resourcefulness continue to shape Costa’s worldview.

With the founding of Costa Brazil, he turned his attention from clothing the body to nurturing it. A pivotal trip to the western Amazon introduced him to Indigenous communities and powerful natural ingredients like breu, a sacred resin with antimicrobial and spiritual properties. Guided by partnerships with organizations like Conservation International, Costa built a brand that honors the land, its protectors, and the rituals that sustain both.

In every sense, Costa Brazil is an extension of its founder’s ethos: pure, considered, and deeply connected to place.

FRANCISCO COSTA: I love that you have all those books behind you.

SUMMER BOWIE: One of the best perks of running a magazine is that we’re constantly receiving beautiful new books that allow us to really sink our teeth into all of the art that we’re exploring. It’s quite a privilege.

COSTA: Isn't that fun? So let me show you my little treasure, because I'm obsessed with books, so I built this little library. This is my pride and joy.

BOWIE: You recently published your own gorgeous book, 555: Revisiting The Fashion Archive of Francisco Costa (Rizzoli, 2023).

COSTA: It's really sweet, that book, because I don't like to look back so much, but I encountered myself in the Calvin Klein archives and I said, how can I actually put this to work? So, I started talking to a few photographers and suddenly I had twenty-one photographers that wanted to shoot the project. It's great because it's also seeing the clothes on and out of context. To me, that works the best.

BOWIE: There's something that feels much more genuine when you look at the collections this way, rather than in a campaign.

COSTA:It wasn't about getting the ‘fashion’ picture, you know what I mean?

BOWIE: I think people forget that you were the first designer in the US to stop using fur. The fashion industry, however, is still an environmental disaster and is currently having this big return to real fur. Did any recent industry trends have anything to do with you making that transition from fashion to sustainable skincare?

COSTA: No. In fact, it goes all the way back to my childhood. I grew up in a very small town in Brazil, and my mom had started this business, which was a children's manufacturing company. All the women that worked in town worked in her factory. She had 725 employees in a town of about 3000 and supported a very sustainable way of living. For instance, whatever textile would remain, she would donate to smaller communities in the rural areas, and she would teach the women how to make quilts. There was always a connectivity with the way she would empower the women with new skills and materials. When I started creating this brand [Costa Brazil], the minute I started engaging with manufacturers, I thought, I don't want to just put my name on something that exists. It’s the same way I created my collections—most of my textiles were created by me. This was a very sustainable approach, though I didn't even know it at the time. I would go to a mill in Cuomo, and they often took me backstage, which I loved. I would go into warehouses filled with yarns—things that have been sitting there since the ’50s—and I always found myself turned on by reinventing, by recreating, reappropriating. With my Fall 2011 collection, I went through knitwear companies in Scotland and in Northern Italy, took all the remnants they had, and I boiled everything. I created a whole new fabric.

BOWIE: So, your mother was really the genesis of both your inspiration in fashion and sustainability?

COSTA: And community care. She was very involved in the community. She was involved in the church and she was civically minded. The mayors of town over the years would come to my house. They used to have meetings there, which was bizarre because she was also so concerned about the wellbeing of the people who worked for her. She really had an impact on me. When I started creating Costa [Brazil] it was that transition, but it wasn't, because for me, it was a process. I was still at Calvin when I started thinking of creating my own brand and I thought it would be a lifestyle brand. I would have furniture linens or what have you, because I love lifestyle. But then, I kept on editing and editing and editing until the Francisco Costa idea ended up becoming Costa Brazil. All of a sudden, the direction changed into beauty because I was really heavily inspired by Piero Manzoni. (Francisco pulls out a book and shows a picture of Manzoni’s Artist’s Shit can). This is what inspired my packaging. 

BOWIE: Oh, yes, of course. The shit cans.

COSTA: You can see how it inspired the candle packaging. Obviously, being on the cusp of Arte Povera, he used not only humor, but elements of highs and lows. That was the genesis of it all. When the name changed from Francisco Costa to Costa Brazil, it felt very radical, but it wasn't about me anymore. It was about creating a brand that spoke about the coast of Brazil and something that could be amplified to many regions: the coast of the Amazon, the coast of Rio, the coast of whatever. It could tap into locations that give that sensibility of the wholesomeness of Brazil. When you say the word ‘Brazil,’ it takes you in so many different directions, but often a very happy place, a curious place. People imagine Brazil being this Xanadu, and so it just felt like it really worked that way.

BOWIE: Costa Brazil is clearly deeply rooted in nature and Brazilian heritage, but you also currently chair the America's Council at Conservation International. What does that work entail?

COSTA: Well, I was working with the Special Olympics in Brazil, designing some of the uniforms. Then, I ended up on the west coast of the Amazon, where I stayed with a tribe called the Yaminawá. They are one of eleven tribes of the same ethnicity in that region. The people there are so gentle and beautiful, and being in the forest itself is beyond magical. 

While I was there, I was introduced to this resin called breu that they use on a daily basis in many of their rituals. At the time, I was already affiliated with Conservation International, but I engaged a lot more as they helped me identify communities within the area, which were already under cooperatives. C.I. and the Brazil Foundation were very important partners that were able to guide me into sourcing everything properly. So, that helped me build this web of people in the Amazon, which I could go and visit.

I also ended up in a state called Amapá, which is near French Guiana and when I got there, I met a single three-generation family that does all the sourcing for three ingredients. I also found Kaya in another region, which has a coconut-like structure. It looks surreal and ancient and the oil is filled with super powerful proteins.

BOWIE: What are the applications of breu within the Yaminawá community?

COSTA: It's a sacred resin. While it's fresh, it's very white and pulpy, and then when it oxidizes, it becomes this rock. After we analyzed it in a lab, we discovered that it is also a mosquito repellant. The Yaminawá often throw those rocks into several different fires throughout the land, but I had no idea at the time that they were doing it to repel mosquitoes. They keep those fires burning day and night, and then prayer is part of it too. If a child is upset and crying, they will have the child inhale the smoke from the resin. It's known to be very relaxing, a little bit like palo santo. It has those esoteric properties. It is also antimicrobial. Discovering something with all of these incredible qualities felt like a dream. It was a lot like discovering a linen that had been sitting in a warehouse for fifty years.

BOWIE: I’m wearing the face serum right now and it has a really wonderful natural fragrance but it’s completely unscented. It feels very light and fresh without drawing too much attention to itself.

COSTA: The serum is the only sku that we have that's not oil based, but you have big potent ingredients in there. Of course, hyaluronic acid being one of them, which is not a Brazilian thing. But then, you have guarana. Guarana is a tiny little seed that's really powerful. It's very well known in Brazil, because they make soft drinks out of guarana. It has an energizing characteristic to it. So, if you feel a tingling, that’s the guarana activating the skin. And then, it also has camu camu, which is pure vitamin C. We curate our ingredients in the best way possible. It's not about the marketing aspect of the brand, it's about the function of the active ingredients, the product itself.

BOWIE: That really mirrors your approach with fashion, because you are so known for your minimalism. You’ve always chosen materials that speak for themselves.

COSTA: I think I’m more of a reductionist than a minimalist, because I love everything. But, as part of my design aesthetics and my way of living, I always like less. I like to be surrounded with a lot of objects, but I don't want to see all of them all the time. Everything has to come at the right moment. I switch my whole house around all the time, which makes my husband crazy. But the editing is so important. Every maximalist moment is followed by a minimalist moment. So, you have to see it all and then you have that cathartic moment when you reduce it all down to what’s functional.

BOWIE: There is something so cathartic about the editing process. How far have you reduced your living space? 

COSTA: Well, when COVID hit, I was in Florida where I had just bought an apartment, but there wasn’t anything in it yet. I ordered two beds before I moved in and that's all I had. I stayed there for the first eight months of the pandemic with almost nothing. It's very hard for me to live without books, though. By the end of the eight months, I had tons of magazines and books.

BOWIE: What does true luxury mean to you today? Especially in the context of sustainability?

COSTA: True luxury is having time. Not having to be somewhere or to do anything. It is a total luxury to be able to edit your life. We are luxury because even though we are a small brand, we are a refined brand. The ingredients are almost unattainable. So, to bring a little bit of the Amazon of Brazil into your home, it's a luxury. And we go through so much to share those ingredients ethically. This work is serious.

BOWIE: How do you balance the tension between haute beauty and environmental responsibility?

COSTA: The beauty business is very interesting to me. There's actually a lot of protocols, and I respect those protocols, but I don’t know if everyone else does. I had zero protocols in fashion. Fashion is very abusive and it’s also very unsustainable. To think that I turned nights and nights with everybody working like insane people. And for what? Just because I wanted to change half of the collection? It’s irresponsible. But, fashion is like a pressure cooker. It makes you insane, because you're not just pleasing the retailers, you have to please everybody. And you're very vulnerable. It's never enough. 

In beauty, at least I know the limits. The way I look at sustainability is the people. How do we protect and empower them? This three-generation family, for example. It’s fundamental that these people can live their lives and continue to manage the land. The Indigenous people are the protectors of the Amazon and there are millions of communities throughout the region.

Another consideration has to do with protecting and empowering the consumer. That means creating a quality product that is functional and beautiful with packaging that's genuinely thought out. This is the most difficult aspect for a designer. So, there are parts of the packaging that are not sustainable but they serve a function. When I created the plastic octagonal cap, it was because it needs to have a grip. We’re talking about oils. That's a protective consideration to prevent the glass from breaking.

BOWIE: Do you ever see yourself returning to fashion in a more traditional sense? Or is beauty and wellness where your heart is now?

COSTA: I love fashion. It's just that fashion doesn't love a 60-year-old man. Fashion is for the young and it should be. I have no interest in going back to fashion because I have nothing to prove. But if I wasn't so busy running this business, I probably would create a couture collection. There's nothing more sustainable than that, you know? The oldies, like Balenciaga, only cut the fabric if somebody ordered a dress. So, there's zero waste. I would've loved to be more playful in that area, or to make a difference in a large corporation with the restructuring of its supply chain. But not just to be a designer showing another eight collections a year. If I could make a difference on a large scale, under a group, I would do that in a heartbeat.

 
 

Positions Of Power: A Conversation Between Ferrari Sheppard & Michèle Lamy

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photographs by Amanda Demme


Ferrari Sheppard is an enigmatic, multi-disciplinary artist whose practice defies classification, and lives firmly at the center of a three-dimensional venn diagram. Likewise, the work of Michèle Lamy is as fluid and instinctive as it is crystallized in her unmistakable and ever-expansive character. She is not just a maven of fashion, design, and art, or an innovator of music and former restaurateur. She is a cultivator of community and expression. Sheppard is not just a painter, writer, photographer and music producer. He is an activist who has worked to provide relief aid in Haiti, shape economic policy and development in South Africa, and shine light on the Israel-Palestine conflict. It makes perfect sense that the two of them would fortuitously meet at Mr. Chow’s while stepping outside for a cigarette. Sheppard’s recent solo exhibition of paintings, Positions of Power, at UTA Artist Space is a testament to the mistreatment of a generation for profit by the criminal justice system. They are love letters to those who carried the weight of the “war on drugs” and risked it all in pursuit of freedom in the United States. Their structural composition is the result of an almost unconscious, improvised dance. A process that the artist refers to as “walking while painting.” The figures are laid heavy with dark brown and black pigments that visibly absorb light, and are gilded with a reflective gold trim, creating a balance that feels harmonious and befitting. At the center of the gallery’s main space lies a brutalist, three-pronged elmwood bench of mythical giant proportions. A place to put everything down and spend some time with the work. A creation that could only come from the collective minds of Michèle Lamy and Rick Owens. And the perfect place for these two chameleonic masters of material, sound, and ceremony to discuss their work.

MICHELE LAMY: I just wanted to start with one thing because your show made me think of this Matthew Stone saying, “Optimism is the new cultural revolution.” We talked a lot when we were smoking at Mr. Chow outside, but I think it’s interesting because we never met before that. When did you start this?

FERRARI SHEPPARD: Oh yeah, what was it, like six years ago, I was travelling around Africa, different countries, we were in Marrakech, and all Addis Ababa and Yasiin Bey could talk about was “oh, Michèle, Michèle, Michèle.” He loves you. When he and I met, he didn’t even know I made music. I was a general artist, and I did photography, I was writing—I did all of the arts, and he was a fan of that, and obviously I was a fan of him, and he discovered my music by accident because he heard me playing it one day. That’s kinda how I prefer my relationships. Any serious relationship that I’m in, be it creative or whatever, I want it to happen organically. I never really push to know anybody because I feel like if you are meant to know them, and they are meant to be in your life, then they will come. Like you. It happens naturally.

LAMY: Yeah, like this bench that we’re sitting on. It wasn’t really planned. It was just sort of a surprise and it happened.

SHEPPARD: Yeah, but that’s the whole thing—I obviously know your work, and it’s truly impactful and powerful. So, when I heard we’re gonna be doing something—you could’ve never planned this in a million years, but it works, and I think that that is part of the cosmic connection between artists. When you were making this bench, it lived in so many homes, it already had a show, so I just think that’s interesting.

LAMY: Yeah because it’s very now, what you are painting. When I was talking about this optimism, you have this dark background, but then there is that touch of gold on top of it. You might call this a reference to power, but it makes you think about what is underneath, and that’s why I was thinking of that optimism. I don’t know if you think power and optimism go together, but I think it goes.

SHEPPARD: In life, we go through stages. So, you have your childhood, and you have your teenagehood—that moment right before you become an adult, some people call it teenage angst. You look at the world and you want to make it better, and a lot of my world is almost crystallized in that moment because I think that there is some truth in that angst and in that discomfort. With the work, I’m always searching for that balance between something that is extremely legible and also just teetering on the edge of honesty, and like you’re saying, optimism is just bursting full of passion.

LAMY: That’s how we think of you.

SHEPPARD: I do this thing—I don’t have a name for it other than I would describe it as walking while painting. There’s been different artists who have done action painting, and I guess this is my version, where I literally have the music playing, and I’ll just walk past really fast, make a gesture and walk away without thinking, because I know that brings forth the truest expression of myself. It’s almost like reading someone’s subconscious, like this is what’s really there because I didn’t have time to form it, or to overthink, or anything; it’s just a moment.

 
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LAMY: But you have so much to say, which is why I was so excited when you said you were doing a solo, because already you have so much in there. And we miss the music because I’m sure there is something that calls for it even if all those moments you flash them on the wall, but then we know, and I think we have to express it, because you are a young artist and you have so much more to say.

SHEPPARD: I just think that subject matter is a really interesting thing for me because I look at some of my predecessors, like Matisse and Picasso, and I think that scholarship was built around their work. Sometimes, I think being an artist from my culture, there is always something deeper to be said about where all of this is coming from. Really, I always had a desire to make what I was experiencing with hip hop, and life, and the crack epidemic. When I was young, I grew up at the apex of the crack epidemic, so we had the police knocking down our door, tearing apart our sofa, looking for drugs. Next morning, I had to go to school, and that’s what I thought was normal until I went to college, and started talking to different people from different backgrounds. I’ve been shot at five times in my life—and this is nothing to be celebrated—it’s really amazing that I made it through all of that, but I feel I have a duty to tell a story, and not always in a stereotypical type of way. My experiences are fine art; they can be translated into fine art in the same way as Picasso’s stance on the Franco regime leading up to World War II.

LAMY: Do you think you are going to make them move with some kind of video? I want to see them moving. Do you think you are getting there, or you have an instant and you flash it on the canvas? 

SHEPPARD: It is, and you asked about the medium, like you know, video. I felt so much like an infant in this where I’m just discovering my hands and my legs where I’m like, oh, I can do that, and I can do this. Even with the installation piece, this is my first installation. I was always intimidated by installation. I never tried it because I was always, “the paintings, the paintings!”

LAMY: It’s very clean, in a way. I’m sure your second or your third installations are going to be a little more chaotic.

SHEPPARD: I want to try different things, and it just dawned on me that once an artist gets out of what I guess you would call the starving artist period, which is really hard, you can experiment. Now you have resources. Every day, I wake up and I’ll wonder if I could do this, and how much does that cost, and it’s okay because I can pay for it now. Being this emerging artist, that is one of the few things I find enjoyable about it.

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LAMY: So, how did you come here, to such an institution for your first solo show?

SHEPPARD: This is actually my third solo show. I know some of your readers might read this and feel a way, but I’ll say the truth. For me, I don’t like group shows. I did a few group shows, but what they have turned into today is something that I’m just not really interested in. I see that the focus is not so much on the art anymore; it’s on the curator. There have been shows where I don’t even know the other artists’ names. I’ll just know the curator.

LAMY: Yeah, but aren’t you pleased to be part of something with other people even if you do not know all of them?

SHEPPARD: For me, it would have to be something really special. I’m working on a project right now; I can’t talk about it too much, but I will say it’s with Interscope Records for their 30th anniversary. They have come and asked some of the most influential artists to come in and reinterpret their catalog for their covers, so that’s a good group show.

LAMY: Exactly. But we see you, you are big there in the mix. 

SHEPPARD: I have to first respect the artist, and not to say that I don’t respect any of the artists doing group shows, but I can stretch my wings more when I do a solo show. There’s a responsibility that you don’t have with a group show or art fair. You may have a little booth, and you do two things, but with solo shows, you have to have a narrative, and it has to come together. Even if it’s chaotic, or through feeling, you are creating a whole experience.

LAMY: I understand. It’s like the runway shows are important for designers, and when you think about the people, the commercial thing is important always, but there is the thing that you have to put in a few space or image, and everything you have together that time. I understand this feeling, and I understand the thing with your solo show.

 
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SHEPPARD: You have really blended fine art and fashion, would you agree?

LAMY: We have Rick Owens, who is a designer and also starting we did furniture for our house, as you said, I took it for a while but it’s very much in a spirit that we have created together and I’m placing it, first more mingling with people…

SHEPPARD: You’re the liaison.

LAMY: I’m a liaison, because I want to see that we are always interacting with people, and I always wanted to be savvy and figure out how it all works, because this is how I see us moving forward. So, something like this bench is a gesture—it’s not a collaboration. 

SHEPPARD: It’s beautiful. This bench brought the show to another level. We were going crazy. I wanted this sofa that was long, and you don’t want it to look cheesy, and here, it was the perfect fit.

LAMY: When they asked me of course, three days before the opening, I was really scrambling to figure out what we could do, and then we found this crazy guy who drove to the storage unit in upstate New York to get this big part, but for some reason, the two heads were in the Rick Owens booth at Saks Fifth Avenue. So, he had to get all the pieces together and then drive them here in two days.

SHEPPARD: Thank you. This is so beautiful. I didn’t know that.

LAMY: Are you planning to do something around your name? Ferrari Sheppard is such a combination of words.

SHEPPARD: I always say that my name fits me, but it is a contradiction. You got the Ferrari, but my middle name is Elite, so Ferrari Elite Sheppard. I always joke that I probably couldn’t become a janitor because I had to live up to my name. 

LAMY: What was your mother thinking?

SHEPPARD: My father named me, but my mother had some strange ideas. She wanted to name me Rashid something, and my father said, “No, this is going to be a different kid.” So, he came up with Ferrari Elite Sheppard, and somehow it flows.

LAMY: When you came in, you told me that you wanted to look like Jim Morrison today. Where does that come from?

SHEPPARD: I love Jim Morrison in terms of style, because I’ve made clothes before, like when I was living in Zanzibar, I started to make clothes. Zanzibar is a beautiful island, it’s a mixture of so many cultures: Swahili, French, Portuguese,etc. And they have what’s called Kitenge cloth. That’s for the men, and it’s just beautiful patterns, and sometimes they have letters or messages in Swahili across it, but I started taking these things and making designs with overlapping collars and different leisure suits from the ‘70s, and stuff like that.

LAMY: My friend Jamaal was in Zanzibar and brought back a fantastic gift, those shoes that are made from old tires. So, I had those tire shoes and they’re great for running in the sand. So then, Virgil said they have this Nike workshop in London where they choose designers to modify the Air Jordan. So, they asked me what kinds of material I needed. I said, “I need tires, I need inner tubes, and I need somebody to cut them because I don’t want those guys to sue.” So, anyway, we changed the sole of the Air Jordan. Of course, nobody at Nike picked up on it, but Virgil sent me one of his books and there was a picture abstract of it.

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SHEPPARD: Just to circle back to what you were talking about with the optimism I have. On a day-to-day basis, I might fuss about anything, like this is wrong, oh my god, blah blah blah.

LAMY: But that is optimism. It’s not that you think nothing is going to happen. You push it out.

SHEPPARD: I think I need that. I need little moments of doubt to overcome. The scary part about our personalities as artists is that we need adversity. If everything went right for me, I wouldn’t know what to do. I need a problem because then I can solve it.

LAMY: There is optimism, but there is also revolution. We don’t want the revolution when people should be celebrating. We want to push our spirit, and this is what is going to change people’s minds. Already, we are going into a world where we should talk about the positive, and especially for the little things, when people talk about the vaccine, it’s just to say what’s bad about this thing. Don’t you think that we should celebrate that there has been a vaccine in one year? That’s what I’m talking about, and it’s what I feel with you. We have to push it and express it in a way that will show hope and beauty.

SHEPPARD: I definitely agree. I used to be on Twitter, and it’s like this black hole of fucking negativity. You get caught up in this shit, so I killed my Twitter last year, and it was the best.

LAMY: So, be on Instagram. Even better.

SHEPPARD: But Instagram, you put a little caption; it’s more of the photos. 

LAMY: Yeah, it’s nice to put a photo and a sentence.

SHEPPARD: And be done with it. You don’t have to argue with it. The last ten years were very interesting because we saw different social media revolutions like the Arab Spring, Me Too, Black Lives Matter. Unfortunately, it’s the nature of the beast where they end, and they move, and we just move out and announce the next thing. I think that we’re approaching a time when we are going to use social media as a tool, but we’re going to step away from it and actually bring in material aspects. What I mean by that is, when I think of James Baldwin, he did numerous interviews and he broke different grounds, but there are physical books to show his work, you understand? 

LAMY: Yeah.

SHEPPARD: There’s physical manifestations of Michèle Lamy and Rick Owens, so I think it’s important for younger people, and I’ll always tell younger people: make stuff, do stuff in the real world. 

LAMY: But, of course. The text and image is a way of communicating something that you see out in the world, but that should push you to do more.

SHEPPARD: Yeah, but I have to be honest, being a Renaissance man didn’t work out well for me initially, and I don’t know why. In my mind, you have to be honest with yourself. I said, “Ferrari, out of all the things that you do, what do you feel that you are the best at? This was before I broke through, and I been painting since I was about two, three years old, so my first show—this is ridiculous—my first actual show was in kindergarten. I’m not lying, you could ask my mother, it was selected to be in the Art Institute of Chicago Children’s Exhibit. My mother still has this picture, and it’s funny, it was a man in a skirt. I was a little baby, and I was like, this man should have a skirt on. I support my digital artists out there and everything, but I think there is something majestic about a painting that lives with you. Right there, and if you have this in your home, you have my DNA. My actual skin cells are being transferred if I touch the painting. I’m living with the painting. That’s beautiful to me. If I was to get a Degas, I would say he lived with this, he touched it. That’s tactile, and I enjoy things like that. 

LAMY: You think that your paintings are going to evolve to be more abstract?

SHEPPARD: My ultimate goal is that—I went from figurative realism in the natural world, to rejecting that completely, to absolute abstraction. The first works that I ever sold in my life were abstract. I sold to this guy, Yusaku Maezawa, who bought the $110 million Basquiat. He started to buy my work, and he liked it. It was abstract, and I had no idea that I was going to go back to three-dimensions.

LAMY: Okay, where did you meet this guy?

SHEPPARD: He was just on Instagram.

LAMY: You see?

SHEPPARD: I was so inexperienced that I didn’t know how to price my work. I had a friend that was friends with Julie Mehretu and she said twenty-five thousand. I was like, “You sure?” And she was like, “Yeah.” And he bought three pieces. That helped build my studio. Art is the only place I’m safe, and that’s why I always run towards art. No matter what type of day I’m having, I can go, and I can say this is where I’m safe. When I was coming up, it was the worst time, all my friends were dying, and we were in the city barely surviving, but on weekdays, I got to go to my art class and I would just escape. My teacher, her name was Ms. Sokoloff, shout her out, she would put on the Beatles, Bob Dylan, or whatever, and free paint. Just go crazy.

LAMY: Fantastic story.

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Getting Afreaky: An Interview With Nikolai and Simon Haas of the Haas Brothers

The Haas brothers seem like mystical ambassadors from the future. However, they are not here to portend of doom and gloom, like the current headlines may lead you to predict. Indeed, the future looks pretty bright according to Nikolai and Simon Haas – fraternal twins who make high-end sculptural objects that only the very lucky can afford, but are almost talismanic in their complexity and humorous in their intentional simplicity. The materials the brothers use mimic natural and rare phenomena in nature. This gives their work a sexual energy that takes phallic and vaginal forms, replete with folds and shafts and rounded curves that could make the prudish contingent quite sensitive. Put the work together and it looks like a combination of Maurice Sendak's menagerie of Wild Things and Dr. Seuss on too many tabs of acid. 

If you visit the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, you can see some of their drawings on the walls of the Chapter Restaurant; next to the lobby. Portraits of Roman Polanski are juxtaposed next to chubby line-drawn creatures holding cocktail glasses – Nikolai’s work is more cartoonish, one dimensional and comical, while Simon’s work is more realistic, detailed and has more perspective. It’s a perfect way to experience their work on an individual scale. But it is when they bring their styles together that the real magic happens. Simon comes from a much more logical perspective, while Niki is much more laid back, creating an incredibly powerful dynamic. 

Over the last couple of years, the Haas brothers have been riding high on a wave of popularity – a collaboration with Donatella Versace took their works straight to the gilded living rooms of the fashion and design world. Solo exhibitions in New York have made them darlings in the art world. However, the proverbial wave crashed when they were on a private jet heading back to LA from an exhibition of their work in Miami.  

To fill their souls again, they have been working with a group of bead artists located in a township outside of Cape Town, in South Africa, who call themselves the "Haas Sisters." This week at Design Miami, the brothers will be premiering works from this collaboration, entitled Afreaks, which include colorful four legged creatures in varying sizes and large psychedelic mushrooms – more examples of the Haas Brothers, and now Sisters, goal to spread positive vibes. The work will also be on view this February at Cooper Hewitt's Design Triennial. 

In the following interview, we talk to the Haas Brothers about their craft, their collaborative relationship, the sexual overtones of their work and how a trip to Africa changed everything. 

AUTRE: When did you first start collaborating artistically together? Was there a specific moment when you knew you wanted to make this happen together?

NIKOLAI: My first remembrance of doing stuff together was when we wanted to make these machines. There was a popular artist at the time who made these rolling ball sculptures. We saw that as kids, and we wanted to make this machine in the backyard. We were about 3 or 4.

SIMON: Our very first collaboration started in 2007. He was in a band with Vincent Gallo, and they were touring. I was in school, and they called me and asked me to tour with them. I dropped out and drove to LA to join them.

NIKOLAI: That was our first professional collaboration.

SIMON: Then a friend of ours offered Niki this construction job in 2010, and he asked me to do it with him. We rented a studio downtown. Basically, that’s when we knew that we were going to be working together always. We actually had a conversation about it. We rented that shop, and we didn’t know what to do.

NICKOLAI: In this conversation, we were asking ourselves, “What are we starting a business for?” We just want to work for ourselves and do our own thing. I don’t think we said it explicitly at the time, but we knew we were dedicated just to being happy people. That was the spirit of what was going on. I remember when we sat down and talked about what we were going to achieve, that was the number one thing—being happy, and trying to spread that in our community. Not just the people who we were working with in the studio, but also in the communities outside of the studio, the LA community.

AUTRE: And the rest of the world as well?

NIKI: Yeah, as much as possible. We have a community in Miami now because we go there all the time. We have a community in Europe because we go there all the time. The whole point is to be happy.

AUTRE: When you collaborate on a piece together, where does it start? Is there a brainstorming session?

NIKI: It’s different every time. I think our most explicitly collaborative moments are when we have to sit down and conceive new shows together. On single pieces, we’re collaborating all the time—asking each other questions as we go. Simon’s always working on the philosophy and the deeper meaning behind the work, and he’s always thinking about how the work can change. I’m kind of doing more brutish work, like sculpting or sketching cartoons.

SIMON: He’s the maker, and I’m just testing stuff all the time. I’m a fanatic; I’m a materials person. The way we collaborate is Niki gives life to these processes, and I give him materials to work with. And we always talk about all of it the entire time. Also, as twins, we’re on the same track.

NIKI: It’s not just the conception of the piece. The collaboration doesn’t stop. The African project is such a good example. The actual objects themselves are just a result of the real important part of the project, which is the philosophy of the book. Hopefully people read it. That’s the kind of project that people will put in history books if they read what Simon has written.

SIMON: It’s basically a feminist, white privilege project that’s wrapped up into something consumable and pretty. That’s the thing—our audience is the 1%. We’re delivering things to them to make them think. It’s not something they would necessarily pick up on the shelf. We get to put this stuff in there to kind of figure out later. We talk about ourselves as entering more into philosophy in that way.

AUTRE: That’s really interesting. My next question was about luxury and the definition of luxury.

NIKI: To be honest, most people who are living luxurious lives have pretty bad situations. There’s something about wealth where it gets to a certain level, and it starts to dehumanize the person. They perceive themselves as an odd commodity, even though they trust themselves more than anyone else. Luxury, honestly, is being as happy as you possibly can be. There’s a sweet spot where you have enough to support what you want to do. At the same time, you are loose enough that you can say, “Fuck this.” If you have to get work, if you have to write contracts—even if you’re making thousands of dollars, it’s not all that luxurious. You’re under your own thumb.

SIMON: Luxury as people understand it is almost like a prison. You go to basically the same hotels and the same restaurants in every country in the world. Someone who is living luxuriously is having the same experience everywhere. You’re getting the Vegas experience all over the world.

NIKI: The Hollywood hotel, the concierge that takes care of everything for you. If we had gone to Cape Town in the luxurious way, we would have been taking crazy advantage of black people. We would have been ignoring the entire context of the point of being there. We would have barred ourselves from doing this project. 

AUTRE: Luxury, in a sense, can also mean the freedom to be creative.

NIKI: We have the luxury to do whatever we want. That’s what I’m looking for. The luxury to allow ourselves to be happy. We want to be curious all the time, and we want to explore that curiosity. That’s the luxury we’re after.

AUTRE: You have the capability to work in this small format, and then you can explore all those ideas that were in your head.

NIKI: We talked about supporting our community. We were telling kids that the guy that hired us for this first time said, “Hey, I’m giving you the ability to start expressing yourself.” That’s how we started making our stuff. Later on, our gallery said, “Hey, make whatever you want.” That was a big moment for us. We weren’t making anything cool before that really. Money and space doesn’t make you very happy. I would actually say I was just as happy when I was 18 years old and broke.

AUTRE: I want to talk about sexuality, because that’s a major part of your work, especially in your drawings.

NIKI: The sexuality, to me, is just the reality of being a person. Everybody thinks about sex. Everybody has sexual organs. It does occur a lot in the sketches in particular. In the rest of our work, it appears about as often as it does in everyday life. You see yourself clothed, and then at the end of the day, you’re naked looking at your own dick. The way that I push sexuality in the cartoons and the way I use it in art work (like the sex room we made a couple of Basels ago), the point is to make it seem like less of a shock. It is simply an innocent expression if it’s done well. Obviously, if not, it can be oppressive. It’s all happiness. It’s an extension of being a person. The point of using it in our work is the idea of leveling the playing field. 

SIMON: It’s so positive. Tom of Finland was more centered on the erotic. The idea behind this is positivity. There’s a very positive message. Beyond that, we focus a lot on animals too. Animals and sex are really common themes throughout history, design, and art (which were the same things until recently). We feel like it’s a natural interest. It’s what’s around us. To exclude it from the work is almost weirder. I was in drawing classes at RISD, and there would be people doing life drawing classes who would leave out the penis. That creeps me out. Showing it is not creepy. Taking it out, showing me your thought process, is kind of creepy.

AUTRE: There’s so much shame attached to sexuality in our culture.

NIKI: We are vehemently anti-shame. That’s one of the pillars that Simon set up for our ethos very early on. Any time we sit down to do a piece of work or a show, we make sure to follow these guidelines we made for our studio.

SIMON: The first few sexual pieces, people would come up to us and say, “Oh my god, you can’t show that.” That’s shaming. We’re not going to listen to them. It’s because of their own discomfort. We made a piece for Basel about sex and shame. People would enter through this giant vagina. We like to get people to consider their own thought processes as they’re experiencing these things. I think it’s important.

AUTRE: It is important. There is a lot of censorship going on these days, like with Instagram.

SIMON: The fact that you can’t show nipples on Instagram pisses me off. The nipple can’t be free; that’s so stupid.

NIKI: We’re not trying to be shocking when we talk about sexuality. People think we’re sensationalist and shocking, but really we’re just expressing what we think.

AUTRE: Do you ever have creative disagreements? How do you resolve them?

SIMON: We have, though it’s kind of rare. We had a big fight in Cape Town, but that wasn’t creative.

NIKI: Talking to each other creatively, we take each other seriously. If Simon doesn’t like something I’m coming up with, or if I don’t like something he’s coming up with, we just try to explore it with each other. You probably have a point, let’s find what it is. Our creative fluidity is beyond good.

SIMON: In school, I had critiques by some teachers who had chips on their shoulders. It was so obvious. They will give shaming critiques of work. We don’t do that to each other. It stunts your creative growth so much. We understand that if one of us shits on the other one’s piece, he’ll stop exploring it and be afraid to do it. I know that his output is going to be incredible, so I have to trust it, and vice versa. The biggest fight we had was in Cape Town, and it came only because we were both going through so much. We’d been riding this crazy high from getting pretty successful pretty fast, and it kind of hit us. When we were in Cape Town and working with these women who had so little, it was like, “What am I doing?” Both of us were going through internal turmoil, which caused us to have a big fight.

NIKI: There were also a bunch of reasons why we had to flesh things out. After the fight, it ended up so much better. It was so worth it. That was the first time we ever had a fight. It’s crazy. Literally, if you talk about the moment before we went to Africa, we had our first solo show in New York. It was met with tremendous success; we sold everything.

AUTRE: Was that R & Company?

NIKI: Yeah. We were hanging out with collectors and all that bullshit. We were staying at a friend’s penthouse. We were taking ecstasy and listening to soul music, and it was so fun. I don’t feel bad for doing it at all; it was unbelievable. But then we go from this moment of complete pleasure and excess to being dumped in Kairicha. We set that up for ourselves, but it was a good reality check. Fuck. Who gives a shit about what we just did? I was proud that we did that, we worked really fucking hard. But we’re young white men. We grew up knowing A-list celebrities. Half of this, whether we like it or not, was handed to us. Suddenly we're working with black women in Kairicha where black people still don’t have the same rights, they are not being given any chances. When we came into the picture, we did a small fair in South Africa, it was the first time they had ever been to the town’s center. That was the first time they got to go to a fancy event.

SIMON: And the crowd that came in was shocked that they were all in there, and as the artists especially. It was really cool.

NIKI: People say it’s not racist in South Africa, but then you try to take them all out to a sushi restaurant, and you can’t do it.

AUTRE: It seems embedded.

SIMON: They’re like, how about going to KFC and going to the top of the hill instead? We actually wound up doing that, and there were people taking photos of us. It was so bizarre.

NIKI: You have to realize, though, that that’s how these people grew up. That’s what it’s like in South Africa, white or black. The whole black community has its own issues with intolerance too. They’re super intolerant with gay people. It’s all fucked up. What we have to understand is that everyone growing up there has grown up with a certain social structure. The idea of ignorance really comes into play. Culturally, people were brought up in an ignorant way. We want people to understand that you don’t want to isolate people you’re hoping to change. If you do that, nothing’s going to happen. And everybody, as evil as they may seem (and I don’t even believe in the idea of evil), nobody is actually evil. Everyone is a person deep down inside. Whatever it is that they’re reacting to, if they’re acting in a way that’s full of shit, like demeaning a person because of their skin color—I believe that they are fully capable of dropping that. It takes time. I think that the Internet is the biggest purge of that of all time. All of a sudden, nobody on the Internet community seems tolerant of homophobia or racism. As a mirror of society, you see society not willing to tolerate that anymore. The Internet touches about 80% of their lives. That’s great. They all have cell phones and listen to Beyoncé and One Direction. But the thing is, Beyoncé is not homophobic or racist. When you have idols that are being put in front of people like that, it’s only a matter of time before it melts away. In fact, anybody who is younger than us is not an issue. You just have to wait for the old people to die away. Although, I’m sure there are some people carrying the torch who are younger.

AUTRE: A lot of people don’t get that reality check. They go to the developing world, but there’s no reality check.

SIMON: You turn into a monster. I felt myself turning into a sharky monster before we went to Cape Town. I was noticing changes in my behavior. Like, I was totally okay with being an asshole to somebody. That’s not like me, and it started to bother me a lot. Thank god we went to Cape Town; it hit us so hard. I remember, right after Cape Town, we went to Miami. We wound up in a G7 flying back here, and I could not enjoy myself. It felt brutal.

NIKI: These pieces of art are selling for thousands of dollars. At some point, it’s too much money. Nothing is worth that much. I know some of our stuff is stupid expensive. But the point is that it’s feeding something much bigger. We’re trying to bring it back to the community.

AUTRE: With you guys, there’s craftsmanship.

SIMON: There are definitely reasons why our stuff is expensive.

NIKI: If there’s an art piece that has historical value, but all that’s happening with it is the piece being taken and used as a commodity. It’s dehumanizing. It’s been moved around in the market with a shitload of money on it. No one needs something that costs that much.

AUTRE: How did the project in Africa come about?

SIMON: Cape Town was named world design capital, and we went for a fair to show some of our pieces. When we got there, we were being tourists looking for art in South Africa, where everything is totally whitewashed. We went to this craft fair, and there was this booth with really cool beaded animals. The woman in the booth was so fascinating and cool and making these beautiful pieces. We just loved her and her story. The booth is called Monkey Biz. On each piece, they have a tag with the name of the woman who made it. We thought that was amazing, because that doesn’t happen very often. It’s a small thing, but it’s actually a really big thing. That’s what got us to want to start doing it. We had this whole penpal exchange with this woman—Montepelo—and her team for about a year, and she really wanted us to come. We showed up and started working with them. They were all afraid of working with us, actually. They’re used to being treated poorly. As soon as they realized we weren’t on that track, it became this really awesome community building experience.

AUTRE: When will those pieces be shown?

SIMON: In December. December 4th.

AUTRE: So that’s your next major project?

NIKI: Yes. And we have another show in February.

SIMON: The theme is beauty.

NIKI: We’re trying to transgress beauty. We’re trying to get rid of our exclusive authorship.

SIMON: Jeff Koons would never name all the fabricators that worked on his project. That’s what we’re trying to transgress. I think it’s kind of cool.

AUTRE: Design and fine art—where is that line?

SIMON: The line is the people who are going to make money off of it. It’s completely commercial. Also, the word “design” is completely Western and very modern. There was never a distinction between the two until recently in our culture. It’s so location and time based that we find it to be gross. We don’t really make that distinction.

NIKI: At the same time, we’re proud to be a part of what’s considered the design community. The truth is, we’re just doing what we do. No labels, man.

SIMON: We rose up through the design world, but we are contentious there. As our stuff is being thought of more as art, the design fair has tried to push us out. Art Basel and Design Miami are the same thing, but they don’t know what side our work should be on.

NIKI: Design Miami has been trying to push us out because we’re “art.”

SIMON: That actually happened with this Cape Town project. We had to appeal and fight for the right to get into it. They told our gallery that they couldn’t show it unless they had us in that booth.

NIKI: The design line exists only in the eyes of the people of commerce.

AUTRE: What do you think will change things?

NIKI: It’s already happening. The Internet, again, is leveling everything. Hashtags have become more important than library cardstock. The way that people think about design now is like library cardstock. The hashtag is going to take over. People in our generation don’t give a shit. People who are old have dedicated time to a certain way of life, and they’re really resistant to changing that way of life. But the truth is, they’re old, and they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

SIMON: The reason why it hasn’t already changed is literally money, government, etc. But that will go away, and it will all be much chiller. It’s clear from looking at the Internet what’s going to happen. Growing up gay in Texas, I saw very few people who were out in the public eye. The best I could get was Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on TV. Now, on the Internet, you can see whatever you want. Everything is going to change.

You can see the Haas Brothers' "Afreaks" this week at the R & Company booth at Design Miami opening on December 2nd. You will also be able to see the work at Cooper Hewitt's Design Triennial, which will open on February 12, 2016 and will run until August 21, 2016. Purchase the "Afreaks" book here. text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper and Summer Bowie. photographs by Sara Clarken

Laid Back Luxury: An Interview With Sean Knibb Who Unveils A Series of Unique Carrara Marble Tables at ICFF IN New York

The Southern California spirit is infectious. It has seeped into everything, from fashion to art to music and even interior design. No one is immune to this spirit – native or non-native. Such is the case with designer Sean Knibb, who today is introducing a series of gorgeous white Carrara marble tables with incredibly precise details of crumpled t-shirts and jean shorts that are concepted in his studio in Venice Beach and carefully etched and sculpted into the marble surface by Italian artisans. The entire process takes 700 hours. Upon first inspection, you can’t believe you aren’t looking at white cotton t-shirts and jean shorts – that is until you notice the veins of the marble and feel the cold, hard surface. Down to the ribbing of the collar and the fringe on the jean shorts – all the minute details are there. It is a strange juxtaposition indeed – until you realize how beautiful and unique the tables are in all their complexity. The series of tables, entitled Casa Canova, are a testament to the designer’s inventiveness and creativity, which has been applied to everything from landscape design to hotel design. Knibb was actually applying his design prowess to the Line Hotel in Los Angeles when the idea for these tables originated – two of which can be seen at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF), which opens today in New York City. We got a chance to talk to Knibb before the fair to discuss the easy breezy influence of Southern California and the design concept behind his new marble tables.

Oliver Kupper: What was your first introduction to design? Was there anything specific that made you want to become a designer?

Sean Knibb: From an early age, I was always interested in making things. It’s always been a big part of what I wanted to do as a grown-up, or what I thought would be interesting to do. So I was always thinking about how to make something or make something for someone. My dad was into design and liked nice things. We grew up in that kind of environment.

OK: Did you grow up in LA?

SK: Yeah, my brother and I moved to LA when we were about five. We lived in Manhattan Beach. And then we moved to Playa Del Rey, Venice. We’ve been up there a long time. We bebopped around the place quite a bit. Pretty much, that’s been home for the majority of my life.

OK: You were originally a landscape designer. You went from landscape design to hotel design. How did that transition occur?

SK: It’s funny, before I was a landscape designer, I was a furniture guy. I made furniture. The jump was—for me it seemed—very gradual. I started doing these interiors for restaurants for friends. Then, over a couple of years, one of the restaurants got noticed. We won an AIA award. That restaurant was the catalyst for the hotel developers to look at my work. That was the project that actually brought the attention, but the desire to do that was there for a long time.

OK: California—Los Angeles particularly—has been a big influence on your design. Is there anything specific about California or Los Angeles that inspires your work?

SK: I think space. There’s a freedom in LA or in California that gives me the feeling of being able to experiment and being able to do new things without feeling whatever pressures you might be feeling in another location—whether it’s Europe, New York. There’s a general acceptance and freedom. I always say it’s like the Wild Wild West. It is the Wild Wild West. That, to me, is the freedom of the ability to express yourself—whether it’s garden or interior or furniture or rubber or Carrara marble. It makes more of a vibe of creativity. I think the movie business plays into that. People in the movie business used to say, “You’re only as good as your last picture.” Trying to always come with something fresh and a new take on things, but still have substance. It has that feeling.

OK: Your new series—t-shirts and jeans in Carrara marble—it’s a very interesting juxtaposition, contradiction, or dichotomy, if you will. I’m thinking of Ed Ruscha or John Baldessari—these artists that the vibe of California was the major influence on them. Even in jazz, too. It’s interesting to find out how LA inspires people in these different ways. Where did the idea for including jeans and t-shirt patterns in marble come from? Where was that inspiration from?

SK: I’ve been looking and studying—whether it’s Bernini or Canova—all of this stuff that’s happening in Europe and happened in Europe. If I’m going to be a designer, what am I going to use to tell my point of view now? So looking at all this stuff—they were carving the things that they saw—elegant women dressed in robes, all of the stuff that was happening around them. I kept looking around and going, “What the fuck are we doing right now? What’s the fabric of today? What can I pick up on?” For me, the whole idea of, “What do jeans mean?”—torn, cut off jeans, chicks in jeans, and guys in jeans. Then t-shirts and how we’ve morphed into $150 t-shirts or $200 t-shirts. We still have $5 t-shirts. What is this particular object? How do you go from 5 bucks all the way to 200 bucks when it’s still just a t-shirt? There’s the idea to play with the symbolism of it and to carve it into marble. That, for me, really personifies the ability to take a simple thing and turn it into an extravagant thing, to take these shapes that we really take for granted and to apply those in the marble or in the space.

OK: And that references where we are now?

SK: It does reference where we are right now, but also says, “Hey, what do you stand for?” Can I use these things that we take for granted in a way that brings some insight and some pause into what’s happening. Also, to use the fabric of where we are right now. I’m not in Italy with the acanthus leaves and the Corinthian columns that have just been formed. I’m in LA with all these icons and they’re wearing t-shirts, or the worker that’s wearing a t-shirt. Everything’s homogenized into one thing. Let’s use that. Let’s make that feel luxurious. That’s how it started. And I’ve been fucking around with figuring out how to take fabric—other people have been doing it too. They just bail it up and ship it to India or Africa. We were toying with how to make cool seating with it. Take the stuff that we’re using and throwing away and figuring out how to bring it back in. Not just recycling, but make it feel uber now.

OK: How long does the process take? How many people does it take to work on one piece?

SK: I do the compositions in the studio and then we send it over to Carrara. It takes about three months for one piece. It takes two guys to carve it. One is a rough carver and modeling, and the other person is more the detail. They work together and then we go back and forth about little details. It’s really two people that do it.

OK: Do you go there and hand-select the marble? Are you involved in that part of the process?

SK: No, it wouldn’t be wise for me to select the marble. They select the marble based on what the composition is and the depth of the relief and what we’re working with. The first t-shirts were a little bit looser so the marble didn’t have to be so perfect. For the jean shorts, because there are areas that don’t have any carving on the piece, we needed a really nice, crisp background, so a cleaner piece of marble was chosen. That’s something that I really entrust to the guys to work through.

OK: And they’ve been doing this for generations?

SK: Oh yeah, this goes way back to the beginning.

OK: From a practical standpoint, as a designer or interior designer, where would you recommend putting one of these tables? They’re functional, right?

SK: Yeah, they’re functional. It depends. It depends on your level of commitment, I think. It can be purely a decorative or occasional piece. Or it can be something that you engage with on a daily basis. It’s your level of commitment—whether it’s in your dining room or in your kitchen.

OK: Yeah, there’s a lot that goes into it. What are you trying to communicate as a designer? What’s your ultimate message? Is there anything blatant or not so blatant that you’re trying to communicate?

SK: I don’t, personally, go into it with a specific message in mind. It’s more about sensitivity and thought about whatever my current mood might be, or what’s at the forefront of my thinking. In design, for me, it’s not so poignant in every move. There are moments of poignancy, but I like the idea that it’s very individualistic. I don’t try to put too much wording and text and my point of view so heavily in the forefront. I let the piece be more dynamic and have its own life and own way to thread through whoever is looking at it or engaging with it. 

“Casa Canova” will be view from May 16 to 19 at Booth 1955 at ICFF, Javits Center, 655 W. 34th St., New York. Tables are available for sale by request. Text and Interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper