Designers may not necessarily be considered artists, but often a collection can come across as true masterpiece. Especially when the world is their palette.
I thought you two weren’t big fans of interviews?
C: Are we known for that? We should work more on that, actually…or maybe it’s good to be so, you know…
Yeah, Martin Margiela style.
C: [Laughing] It’s true. I mean, we studied in Belgium. And Belgian designers don’t do many interviews.
Is this your first time in the Middle East?
P: It’s my first time in Dubai.
C: It’s my second time. No, I don’t know how many times… Actually, I grew up in Abu Dhabi when I was 11 and 12 [years old]. Yeah, weirdly.
No way. Your parents were there?
C: Yeah, my parents were expats in Abu Dhabi.
You traveled the world.
C: Yeah, I mean my mom’s Peruvian, my dad’s from Belgium. And Peter’s half Austrian, half Italian. So we’re quite a mix.
That’s cool. Hot and cold.
P: Yeah, hot and cold. [laughing] Talking about hot and cold…can I get some green tea? [Peter gestures to the waitress]
C: Yeah, me, too.
The Middle East is one of the fastest growing markets, along with Russia, China, and Brazil. In terms of design, do you think about pleasing new markets? Like, “Let’s please the Chinese this year, let’s please the Arabs this year…
P: No, we’re actually not that calculated. We just follow our instincts and we sell to around 45 countries now and around 200 stores, so it’s exciting to have such a big map to work with.
When one looks at your work, it really looks like optical art. Do you get inspiration from art? Do you think of any particular artists when you design?
P: Yeah, absolutely. We look at a lot of art during the design process for the research.
For the winter, we actually looked at a painting of El Greco that we really loved because it was so dramatic and the kind of colors and embroideries. It all looked so rich. But then we wanted to put a, sort of, harsh modern light on that painting and slate it in our way. It’s always important that the inspiration is no longer evident in the end. We would never like that you could link something straight back to its root, because anyway there are so, so many roots and it’s important that it just becomes what excites us.
Spoken like a true artist.
Christopher, would you be able to design a garment that Peter would design, and vice versa? Can you read each other’s minds?
C: It’s weird, because all of the garments are designed by the two of us, so…
You know, a lot of duos say that. All of the duos say that. [laughing]
C: Well, you start with something and then you build onto something else, but you always add something to it together.
