[November 6 2014]
charles-edmond henry — Recently, you’ve been collaborating with Phoebe Philo and the Céline team on several projects. You designed runway shows and a flagship store here in London. How did that come about?
olaf kneer — I don’t know exactly. One day they just showed up. They called and then visited us, and then they called again and visited again, and then they dropped a big bag of Céline material on this table and said to have a look at this, this is what we do, and we’d like to work with you on a show. It was a kind of tentative start. It was an experiment. It was like, why don’t you have a look? If we think we can work together, then let’s develop this together. And I think it worked really well. There was an idea of exploration and material research on the one hand — working with real materials. I think that’s a great interest that Céline has, obviously, and that we have as well. And there was also a desire to explore, to try something out, which might not be completely polished and final. So this idea of a spatial sketch. I think that’s something that we share, this interest in exploration.
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