If the best reason to know the rules is to be smarter about breaking them, then consider the year-old collaboration between designers Albert Chu and Jennifer Myers not so much a violent upheaval but an exercise in playfully tweaking the system. Chu and Myers met while studying at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design — an institution they say reinforced their respect for constraints — and each worked in architecture and launched an accessories line before combining their shared pedagogy into a series of leather and brass pouches. “I think working within, and rebelling against, a set of parameters is actually the ultimate in design fun,” Myers says. Chu agrees: “We love working with fundamentals and trying to introduce a slight deviation,” says the designer of Otaat, which stands for “one thing at a time.” “Harvard was about being restrained in the conceptual and design intervention, that sometimes the most effective and thorough result could arise from a minimal, subtle act.”
To that end, the partners on Otaat/Myers Collective, who live blocks away from each other in Los Angeles, deliberately started their joint effort by articulating restrictions: “The collaboration was really based in conceiving of new problems and working through them,” Chu says. The pair became interested in clutches as archetypal objects with basic foundational elements, nothing more than two leather pieces, a closure and a wrist strap. But they are also the sort of blank slates that are open to variation, in which the smallest decisions about color or shape make a big functional difference. “It suits our processes of starting with elemental materials and primitive shapes and introducing a twist on the norm — something that elevates it beyond its understood use or aesthetic,” Myers says.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that the designers are so adept at pulling joy from order. Both Chu’s father, a renowned physicist who has been considered for the Nobel Prize, and his grandfather, an influential mathematician in differential geometry, combined creativity with technical prowess. For Chu’s grandfather — who wrote a proof of the Gauss-Bonnet Theorem that is known for its brevity — simplicity was the purest way to describe an idea, and the reason for all that deep knowledge of underlying complexity. “They taught me that creativity and rigor are necessary ingredients for producing interesting and thoughtful results,” Chu says. “The idea that the perfect physical form could solve a specific function appealed to my sensibility towards simplicity and multivalency, where one thing could perform multiple roles.”
Another theme that seems to recur in the designers’ work is a sense of play and humor, a creative form that notoriously requires knowing which boundaries to push. Otaat first burst onto the scene a few years ago with a coveted series of conical, iconic party hats, updated in leather, and there are little puzzles and moments of sly surprise arranged throughout both designer’s home studios. Scroll through for a glimpse into Chu’s and Myers’ inspirations.
Pouches from Collection One by Otaat/Myers Collective, which will soon expand into larger accessories and housewares. For Chu, the classic example of a subtle intervention is “the box with a twist, where maybe creating one parametric surface may be all you need to generate a series of inventive solutions across the design. This practice is how we both approach our individual projects as well as our collaboration.”
Bag ideas and prototypes in Chu’s studio, for playing with undulations and “working out all the construction details so that everything feels as minimal and pure as possible.”
Post-it notes for “organizing ideas spatially,” Chu says, and mapping out groupings of ideas for future collections.
“My sister basically taught me how to laugh because often she finds the most subtle and quotidian things the funniest,” Chu says, recalling a time she called him in college to read passages from Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt. “It was about how Babbitt was looking up at the ceiling and making observations. That type of humor is what I absolutely love, and I hope that Otaat can also find fun and humor in the subtle. I think that it’s so important for Otaat to take itself seriously – but not too seriously. And so I try to incorporate a little wink and nudge with everything, like the extra set of handles on the Toby bags (pictured above).”
Cardboard bow tie by Hollis Hart and postcard of Colombian pendant from the Tairona culture.
Two chairs with brass arms by Danish designer Kofod Larsen, who was both a furniture designer and architect, with upholstery that Chu describes as “Memphis meets PoMo meets Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
Woven leather experiments in Chu’s studio.
Quarter circle clutch from the next season of Otaat/Myers Collective.
Ceramics made by Chu’s grandmother on a dining table held together only by tension straps – no joinery, nails or glue – made by Anton Schneider and Andri Luescher of Fobricated.
Bags awaiting shipping.
Perforated circles that fold into triangles from Myers’ thesis project: “Geometry is something I’m always interested in, but in this case it provided a systematic yet super expressive framework within which to study roof structures and enclosures that could scale and shift.”
Materials for Myers Collective jewelry, which Myers started in 2012 as a “series of personal experiments designing jewelry for myself.”
On Myers’ work desk, an invertible brown paper object, brass puzzle and glasses scored at a flea market in Hell’s Kitchen: “The vendor had stripped the finish from many different periods and styles of glasses, and to see them all that way was like looking at a taxonomy of spectacles,” she says.
Pieces pinned to an inspiration board by Myers, who cites artists Ellsworth Kelly, El Lissitsky, Josef and Anni Albers, and Agnes Martin as inspirations.
Liquid Explosion (2010) by Fritz Chestnut on Chu’s mantle.
Ceramic bowl from the pair’s favorite L.A. shop, Iko Iko.
Paper vessel on one of the many built-in details in Chu’s Craftsman house, in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Myers’ vintage L’Equip 220 that puts my Vitamix to shame.
In Chu’s bedroom, a piece of dogs sniffing each other by artist Connie Wong. “Whenever we’ve met, whether in L.A. or Cambridge, Albert and I have always found a common language,” Myers says. “We have a similar point of departure.”
You can learn a lot about Dutch designer Bernadette Deddens by just looking at her. First there are the shoes, which — depending on the day and the whims of London’s weather — she very well may have made herself. One pair of sandals constructed from $25 worth of pale leather and black cording could be mistaken for Margielas, yet are no less awe-inspiring for the fact that Deddens actually nicked the look from Tommy Hilfiger. After all, who makes their own shoes, anyway? Then there’s her jewelry, which is almost always her design, unless it’s a collaboration with her husband Tetsuo Mukai, with whom she formed Study O Portable two years ago. The jewelry is their way of giving people a form of creative expression that can be carried outside the house and into the wider world, as Deddens so poignantly demonstrates — hence their otherwise peculiar studio name.
For more than three years, the Argentinean sisters Sol Caramilloni Iriarte and Carolina Lopez Gordillo Iriarte kept a design studio on the second floor of a building in Barcelona, handcrafting an eponymous line of leather bags in relative privacy. Sol, 32, was working part-time as a set designer for films; Carolina, 25, had just finished a year apprenticing under her friend Muñoz Vrandecic, the Spanish couture shoemaker. Called Iriarte Iriarte, it was a modest operation. Then in June, fate intervened.
You can sometimes guess at the greatness of an exhibition based purely on its location (a little off-the-beaten track, naturally), or when its roster lists nothing short of five talented up-and-coming designers. With that in mind, it seemed only right to plow the bitter, wintry streets of Stockholm earlier this month to find out more about the new, colorful Cray Collective.
