Fashion Illustrator Konstantin Kakanias Launches First Furniture Collection

PARIS — Famed fashion illustrator Konstantin Kakanias has launched his first furniture collection, with pieces making their debut at PAD Paris Art + Design, which runs until Sunday.

Kakanias, known for his fanciful work with Cartier, Dior, and reimagining the Gucci logo as a snake, among other high-profile fashion projects, partnered with Athens-based Stefanidou Tsoukala Gallery to create the pieces.

“I love art as a useful commodity,” Kakanias told WWD. “I love art as a cup, or a pot, or a screen. I love it, and I don’t think it’s lesser. I think it’s wonderful to have the ability to express oneself in many stages and many mediums.”

The prolific artist has made his mark in many forms. He started his career designing fabrics for Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Lacroix, among others; his paintings and sculptures have been exhibited around the world, and he still maintains a monthly fashion sketch page in Vogue Greece at the behest of his beloved mother. And while he has worked on interiors before, at Christian Louboutin’s Vermelho Melides hotel in Portugal, which opened last spring, it was his first time creating furnishings.

Gallery founder Veta Stefanidou Tsoukala approached him with the idea after the two worked together on a mural on the island of Ios. The idea — and the partnership — sparked something new for Kakanias.

“It’s a completely new role, new challenge, new opportunity in a way of having a new expression. And I really believe in creating as much as we can, in whatever way we can,” he said about exploring this new cross between the world of art and objects.

He brought his Mrs. Tependris character, the eccentric fashion maven that first appeared in 1996 and has since been the subject of two books and a film, along for the ride. She’s embedded in marquetry side tables, and elsewhere hand painted on a lacquered wood cabinet. Kakanias maintains his sense of whimsy in the pieces, with miniature, bronze human feet anchoring the cabinetry.

For wallpaper he looked to the plants in Pedanius Dioscorides’ ancient encyclopedia of botany for inspiration, rendered as an “aquatic jungle” with gigantic-ized, hand-painted flora in white and gold on a deep blue background. Giant magnolias make for wall lamps, while undulating mirrors are hand-carved as are chaise lounges with the legs sloping up into serpents. There are textiles, pillows and ceramics, too.

The illustrations from antiquity serve as an entry into his charmed world. “The idea is that we enter into their world. It’s something that I find very interesting, because it gives us another state of scale. We can enter into something that we don’t really see a lot. It’s surprising, to me, and also magical and also hopeful.”

Elsewhere he pays tribute to the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Paris. Mrs. Tependris runs around town visiting various Parisian landmarks, jumping hurdles or carrying the torch, all while in her trademark fabulous fashion and a pair of towering high heels.

Hope carries through with that piece as it harks back to his work with the Greek games, when he was tasked with creating a book for the Athens Olympics in 2004. He notes that the ancient Greeks had a practice called Ekecheiria, or calling a truce to halt wars during the Games to allow safe passage for athletes and citizens.

“It’s an homage to peace,” he said.

The limited-edition collection — there are only five of each piece — took two months to create. Kakanias sketched his ideas at home in Los Angeles, while Veta and Laura Tsoukala, her daughter who runs the gallery, selected the works to put into production. Kakanias then traveled to Greece to work with local artisans on the collection.

“They brought me to the most incredible hidden places of Athens, in basements, behind buildings, up three staircases, to craftspeople who do really meticulous work, from Syria and all across Asia Minor, who have been taught by their grandfather and are very devoted,” he said. “I’ve never done that. I’ve always been in my studio making drawings. So that was a wonderful change.”

It’s not precisely true that he’s always been in his studio, Kakanias joked. When he was 22 and working for designers including Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani or Emmanuel Ungaro, he would sketch in a notebook while riding the train around Paris. “Then I would send them by post. It was very, very old fashioned and very chic,” he said. “But that was the 1980s.”