Artist, designer, columnist, 

Colourful, irreverent, romantic

NO BLACK in his wardrobe 

Luke Edward Hall looks to the past for inspiration: Cocteau, Cecil Beaton, Oliver Messel, Rex Whistler. The Bloomsbury Group, the Baroque and the Rococo, interior designers such as David Hicks and Dorothy Draper.
“I like taking inspiration from the past, mashing things together and creating something entirely new. A drawing, for example, might be inspired by Ancient Greece as much as it is by shimmering 1980s pop music’.
At the age of 16 he founded his first fashion magazine. He studied at Central Saint Martins School and after a two-year internship with an architect and interior designer, Luke founded his studio in 2015.
Inspired by the notes of Soft Cell and New Order, LEH has set up collaborations with Burberry, Ginori, Rubelli, the V&A Museum, Dyptique, Gant and Lanvin. He created the design of the thirty-eight bedroom Hotel Les Deux Gares in Paris and Josette, a bar and restaurant in Dubai. Luke has already published two books: Greco Disco: The Art & Design of Luke Edward Hall, published by teNeues, and A Kind of Magic: The Kaleidoscopic World of Luke Edward Hall, published by Vendome press.
Myth: Antinous and Hadrian; romantic literature: Byron, Cocteau and then Orlando. LEH has co-founded a genderless brand of clothes: Chateau Orlando, with Woolf’s Orlando in mind. Could we not interview him?
LEH is also a columnist for the FT Weekend, writing on design, gardens and aesthetics.
The cottage he lovingly inhabits with his husband the designer Duncan Campbell, of the Campbell-Rey duo, already guests on the pages of Orlando, together with their dog Merlin, are refined and cultured hosts, sharing their corner of maximalist paradise with friends, amidst a shell-shaped chair and objects from their world travels.

“Remember to be a palm tree”

This interview will be developed in Two Scenes:
the first will be conducted by the characters of the works that inspired LEH,
the second part will be conducted by Orlando’s creative director Antonella Dellepiane Pescetto. 

FIRST SCENE

.ANTINOUS

The figure of the young Antinous is inextricably linked to that of the Emperor Hadrian without whom he would have remained an ordinary young man. The love, the relationship and then the post -mortem cult that the emperor dedicated to him made him part of history forever.

Antinous died in mysterious circumstances, falling into the sea. Suicide, murder by jealousy, accident, no one has ever given an answer. But what interests us is not so much the circumstances that led to his death, but the care and dedication that Hadrian devoted to Antinous even after his death. Hadrian created a cult, rituals, games, statues, obelisks, even a city, all in honour of this beloved being from Asia Minor. Antinous was also catasterised, i.e. transformed into a star.

ANTINOUS: What would you be willing to do for love?  How would you use your art, as a pledge of extreme love?

LEH: I regularly draw my husband, my friends, acquaintances and imagined characters. My emotionally-charged work explores how I feel about love, as well as masculine tropes. I want my drawings and paintings to vibrate with a bold, lyrical motion, combining classical iconography with the immediacy of the everyday, oscillating between mythic narratives and a deeply personal interior space. I attempt to challenge dominant heteronormative representations and to unite masculine and feminine elements in harmonious compositions.

 

.BYRON’S CHILDE HAROLD

Childe Harold was an emblematic character of the author’s poetics and his alter/ego: the Byronic hero. The peculiar characteristics of this character are his being the victim of irreconcilable opposites: religion, atheism, goodness and cruelty, perennial dissatisfaction and the search for powerful emotions to make him feel alive.

HAROLD: What makes you feel alive? What do you wish was never missing in your life?

LEH: Being in my home, with my collection of art and furniture and objects, being in the garden with the flowers and vegetables we’ve grown, being with my husband and our dogs… Drawing, painting and making things, too… All of these things I wish to never be missing…

 

.ORLANDO

Orlando has travelled through time and space and always at the side of his art, poetry and in search of love and self.

Orlando: Which historical periods would you have liked to have lived through? What would you have liked to learn from those eras?  

LEH: There is something about the interwar period that has interested me for many years. Of course, it was an awful time in many ways, a moment between two World Wars, but it seems as if at this moment a sort of burst of creativity occurred, particularly in London. I’m really drawn to artists and designers who began making a name for themselves then – people such as Cecil Beaton, Oliver Messel, Stephen Tennant… They were romantics, and they lived for beauty.

What do you think of the period in which you were born?

I’m often glad that, when I was a teenager and young adult, social media was not so much of a thing. Of course, Instagram has been a major tool for me, and still is, but I’m glad that I didn’t grow up feeling shackled to a mobile phone. The time I was born I feel totally content about. I think it’s difficult to think otherwise, because I’m happy about the journey I’ve been on so far, and if I’d been born in a different period, who knows where I’d be now…

 

.LE SANG D’UN POÈT BY COCTEAU: 

The 1932 film is divided into four scenes: during the first one the poet draws a face, and he is startled when the mouth drawn starts to move. The mouth transfers itself onto the man’s palm which he placed on the mouth of a statue and it too comes to life, becoming a real woman.

In the second scene the poet finds himself a prisoner in his room and manages to get out of it by going through a mirror, as recommended by the statue, only to find himself in a hotel (Orlando?). Walking through the corridors of the hotel, the poet peeks into the rooms and witnesses people who are smoking opium and a hermaphrodite. The corridor turns into a labyrinth. The poet first seems to obey an order to commit suicide, but then reconsiders and returns to his room where he destroys the statue.

In the third scene some boys are playing snowball, one of them is hit, falls to the ground and dies, smearing the snow with blood. The square where they were playing is transformed into a stage. The poet and a woman identical to the statue play cards on the dead body of the boy. Next to them stands a man dressed as Louis XV. The young man’s guardian angel prevents the poet, who is cheating, from winning. The man shoots himself and the woman is petrified again. She walks on the snow leaving no trace.

POET: Which of your works would you like to see come to life? 

LEH: Interesting. I’d love to see one of my Arcadian drawings or paintings come to life. An ancient forest, pink smoke, a full moon, wolves and wild dancing…

What do you think happens IN the rooms of the Orlando Hotel when its readers put it away?

Mischief!

Who would you like to play cards with? (a character from the past and present).

Cecil Beaton, Wes Anderson.

 

 

SECOND SCENE

ANTONELLA DELLEPIANE PESCETTO: How did Chateau Orlando come about? Did you have Virginia Woolf and/or other references in mind? Why Chateau? This project started from fashion. Now it is already looking at homeware… how do you plan to develop Chateau Orlando?

LEH: I’ve worked on quite a few collaborations, including a couple for fashion brands, as well as interiors brands including Ginori 1735, Svenskt Tenn and Rubelli. Wemanage, my business partners, got in touch a while back with the idea of starting a brand together. The team is based in Milan, and we’d actually already worked together on a clothing project for Le Sirenuse, the hotel in Positano. It felt like a wonderful opportunity, because I would have support with the business side of things and the manufacturing processes, but also complete creative control. I loved the idea of having a new avenue available, an avenue to funnel lots of my creative ideas into, an avenue that wouldn’t have been possible to open by myself.

I spent months pondering the name of the brand: it needed to encapsulate my ideas and thoughts and it felt like an enormous decision. These days I come across many brands with seemingly forgettable names; I wanted to come up with something that would pique curiosity. I liked the idea of an imaginary place, but one that shape shifts, moves around and travels in time. Chateau Orlando could be a crumbling old hotel on the French Riviera, but it could also be a nightclub in West Hollywood. It’s up to the customer as much as me. Plus, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando is a favourite book. This fantastical, flamboyant novel about shapeshifting and gender fluidity set against a backdrop of various historical periods includes key themes that I am really excited about exploring with the brand. We have plans to develop Chateau Orlando, yes, and we’ll introduce new items and projects whenever the timing feels appropriate, or when we’re excited to try something out.

ADP: Your world is in colour. What emotions do different colours arouse in you? 

LEH: Colour to me is probably the most important aspect of my work, along with my drawings. Different colours bring about different feelings and emotions. I find that yellow always brings me utter joy, whereas green I find very calming in all its forms. Orange is exciting, pink is delicious…

 ADP: Would you ever accept a black and white project? How would you handle it?

LEH: Of course. I actually like black and white a lot. I like high contrast. I would focus on shapes and textures.

ADP: Childhood. Who encouraged you to express yourself through art? What artistic media did you prefer to use as a child, as a boy and now as a man? Have they changed with age, or have they remained the same? 

LEH: My parents and grandparents were extremely supportive. I also had excellent, encouraging art teachers throughout school and college. Often I was the only member of afterschool art club… I feel so lucky that I had such good teachers. It’s interesting because I loved working with collage as a child and teenager, and collage is still a part of my work – I love mixing materials, cutting and pasting.

 ADP: When you are commissioned for a project, what step do you start from? What is your approach to work generally like? Creative process. 

LEH: I always begin with research. I visit museums and galleries, and I shut myself away in my studio. I look at books, I look at old magazines, I look through my collection of assorted bits and pieces collected over the years… Then I start sketching.

ADP: Home = Beauty, but with imperfection.  I think your aesthetic vision of the home does not aim for perfection, because it is too catalogue-like and less real-life. How do you like to employ irony in the interiors and in life?

LEH: Well, I like interiors that have a sense of wit about them, a sense of humour. I don’t mean that I need my rooms to make me laugh out loud, but I want them to put a smile on my  face or to make me raise one or two eyebrows. I like rooms that feel slightly ‘wrong’ in some way. I like odd colour combinations, weird patterns. I still need balance and beauty, but I think that for me beauty is about tension – the tension that arises when certain colours or items of furniture are placed next to each other, say.

ADP: What fascinates you about folklore and the world of Witches? Do you have any amusing rituals or superstitions?

LEH: Through the prism of time, I see that I began to enjoy exploring Paganism and folklore when I was young because these topics provided me with an escape into another wholly more fascinating universe. Magic was a wonderfully enriching cure for small town syndrome. I still find myself continually creatively inspired by Britain’s rich and rustic cultural tapestry. The songs and the dances. The costumes and the artefacts. The weird customs and very wonderful festivals. This ‘other world’ is not a thing from the past to peer at with curiosity. It is alive with a beating heart and right here, on our doorstep.

ADP: You work on plates, canvases, wallpapers, vases, trainers, but also lampshades and souvenirs…. What other medium would you like to try in the future? What other artistic world would you like to contaminate yourself with?

LEH: I would love to think about, at some point in the distant future, set design and costumes for the theatre. I’d also like to do more writing, although I’m really not sure what form this could take. It’s exciting to think about future chapters, but I like not planning too much. I  really enjoy the process of experimenting…