YY SO SERIOUS

Angel Harvey-Ideozu: These chairs... they’re mammoths! What’s going on here?

Tawanda Chiweshe: This is [AA67] a project inspired by the K67 kiosk by Saša J. Mächtig that we débuted at Capsule Plaza during Milan Design Week in 2024. We’ve always referenced the kiosk, and at one point, we even tried to design a new iteration of it. Later, we had the idea to create a furniture series inspired by it, which was just an excuse to touch base with Mächtig himself. We pitched him the idea to get his blessing, and he was super down. It then sort of came full circle when I was able to have a conversation with him at the Plaza as part of the programme. For us, what was interesting was how aspects of our point of view, which diverge from Mächtig’s, could also be present while still being respectful of the original. I remember with some of the first iterations, the wall thicknesses were a bit more slender and scaled down from the real kiosk. One day Francisco said to me, “It’s missing something. You need to take the exact same thickness and radius of the kiosk and apply them to these domestic scales.” That’s why these things end up looking like monsters, larger-than-life. They end up taking on a very specific expression that makes them more engaging and accessible.

It is this idea — which I think we saw through Alaska Alaska, and I would love to see how it progresses through YY — of making something into ‘pop.’ It’s about working in an attractive way.

TC: One thousand percent. Especially in the context of [our exhibition, AAAAYY: same same but different], one thing Francisco and I have been reflecting is the very specific appreciation of the potential of mass design that we learned from working at Alaska Alaska with Virgil. There are a lot of design outcomes that we create today and that have become synonymous with us that I might not have wanted to author while I was at university.

The glaring question, then: so why leave Alaska Alaska?

Francisco Gaspar: Alaska was great. We had a lot of creative freedom. But after Virgil’s passing, we had a lot of questions surrounding output. We were constantly debating whether things fit the studio language, because when we would try to put them in the context of the studio, that mass — or “pop” — element was missing. Things were potentially more representative of who we were as individuals, and those constraints revealed themselves over the last couple of years. It was also time for people to acknowledge us as practitioners, beyond just being Virgil’s design studio. A lot of people didn’t know what we did and they would come to us for his name, not necessarily for our expertise or the way we think. So we set up YY to start putting ourselves more at the forefront of the work that we’d created in that period of us understanding who we were in relation to Virgil, and who we are in relation to ourselves.

Why YY?

FG: Because of that.

Why why why?

FG: Because of the question. But there are multiple reasons.

TC: One, for example, is that Francisco and I used to have a shared note on iMessage where we would write down all of our thoughts and ideas, and YY just happened to be its title. So for us, it’s more so about honoring our partnership and the things that have come through our direct dialogue, relationship, and collaboration.

How did you guys meet?

FG: We met in COS in Knightsbridge in 2016, folding clothes on the top floor. We were there every weekend, holding down the fort in the menswear department. I came to London to study graphic design. When we started working together, with Tawanda’s background studying product design at CSM, we would be on the shop floor talking about design, fashion, and music. He put me on to so much fashion. That’s how the friendship started. I have pictures of him in the COS fitting room trying on some Dries Van Noten [Laughs.] I got the job at Alaska through him. It really all goes back to our friendship. Everything evolved from there.

TC: Once Francisco and I started formally working together at Alaska, everything got more intense because the stakes were higher. We were immediately front-facing, interacting with all of these major clients. Because of that, we developed this specific dynamic of shared accountability. We would resolve every single thing together just to distribute the responsibility. That partnership became another liberating tool to be able to take ourselves out of the equation and let the best result come out.

FG: But the experience of working with Virgil quickly made us realize that it was not about us. It couldn’t be. It was always about something bigger. We were not fighting for our identities. It was not my idea or [Tawanda’s], because ultimately it was neither mine or his. [Laughs.] From the get go there was no ego, and ego is everything for a lot of people. That’s not something that everyone gets to experience straight out of university.

Does the Alaska Alaska manifesto still stand in your vision for YY: “prototypes as the final outcome,” “WORK-IN-PROGRESS,” and creative community.

TC: To fast track, that brings us to the exhibition title, same same but different. Again, the years [at Alaska] were extremely formative to the extent to which we understand our own value system even after Virgil’s passing, that they are almost part of our DNA. We are going to double down on that. Then there are things that we’re going to let go of because they don’t serve or reflect us accurately.

FG: The same way people attend Central Saint Martins and produce works that are very rooted within those schools of thought, that’s what Alaska is for us. Virgil was very generous with the doors that he opened for us and the way he dealt with people, and we can’t abandon that or the work we did. It’s going to be the same but different.

It’s interesting that you take a break and relaunch with the PRO Lever Handle with izé. A door handle to open a new chapter. What’s that project about?

FG: It’s divine intervention. Technically, that project started in 2023 with an email to izé, but we only got the final product last October due to delays. We went there without knowing what we were going to design and throughout the process we were just reacting to things that they sell on their website. It designed itself quite quickly.

What products were you reacting to?

FG: It was an anti-skateboarding fitting that they sell for public architecture. The handle is inspired by a skate truck, so we actually created the pro- to the anti-, in a way, which is how we think about things. A door handle is very loaded in terms of meaning for where we are at the moment, but it’s something that just happened. This wasn’t the plan when we reached out.

TC: We are idea-led. We often start with ideas in isolation, so we’ve just always sat on a bank of objects and outcomes that circulate the ether of the studio, and if we see a context that’s relevant, we apply it. It’s about enabling the right conditions to form the most appropriate context for any given thing that we produce. We plug and play and eventually find the right home for them. In this instance, all the conditions and circumstances fell into place.

It’s funny that you say YY is “shaped by contradiction.” Contradiction can be the ultimate show of growth — are your ideas and knowledge really evolving if you’re not contradicting a past, present, or future you?

FG: Contradiction keeps us in check with reality, because it allows us to put ourselves into something and then remove ourselves from it. That stops the work from being either framed by my own perspective and worldview, or limited by it, and hopefully, people relate to it because of that. It also goes back to doing things now that we would never have done before. But we do them, contradicting ourselves, because it opens up a conversation, not only for us, but for others. We really want to be referenced as people opening literal doors into the design discourse. Again, the door handle is an example of that. Contradiction is prototyping. It’s this idea that objects don’t need to be perfect to exist, and you don’t need to spend a month perfecting one thing. Instead, you could be working on ten ideas in that time. But one person can only do so much in a day. If you extend your ideas to other people, they can actually come to life very quickly and can do more work.

TC: Francisco always gives the example of this intern at Alaska. Virgil needed to design an album cover, and he just let them do 90% of it. Suddenly, the kid had something that they made out in the world.

FG: I remember going to Paris and seeing one of the first projects that I worked on with Virgil, the Futura Off-White [Spring/Summer 2020] collection, on the runway and in the showroom. As a recent graduate, coming into a space where someone has trusted you to create something and put it out into the world is the most validating thing.

YY is really formed from the stuff on the cutting room floor. The studio and exhibition-slash-residency put them back on the table, but these are ideas and personal languages that didn’t make the cut, for whatever reason, while at Alaska. Talk to me about the difference between the floor and the table.

TC: I think it’s more so that the floor is the table. [Laughs.] Because what’s important to us is finding a way to get the idea out by any means, prototyped ideas are also final. The stuff that’s on the side of our design practice is the stuff that we want to validate. Not just because that work is richer — which every practitioner knows — but because that’s where Francisco and I found our collaboration. That’s where things formed and were understood. That’s where a practice was established. So it just makes sense for it to be lifted from the floor and put on the table. It’s also the idea of putting something on a plinth to validate it. So much of what we talk about at present is about validating approaches, perspectives, and mindsets. The way for us to speak to kids and guide them is to get them to copy us and reference things they didn’t think they could.

FG: It’s really important to say that prototyping is not a lack of rigor. It’s not because we don’t know how to reference the canon. We do. It’s about opening the door to a new way of doing things while still being extremely respectful of institutions and legacy, past and future. Because of the context, people might look at our work and say, “Oh, they’re not serious.” Oh, no, we are very serious people. But to be able to communicate and exist within different contexts is important, even if people look down on it. Once you’re cognizant of that, it really doesn’t matter [what people think]. That’s why we’re so confident.

What’s the daily traffic in your studio like?

TC: For a long time we were just executing. But we naturally came to a stage where we needed to go outside to nourish the practice through conversation. So on any typical day, at least two people are coming in, or we might have meetings with five people.

FG: That’s why it was really important to capture [and bring] the essence of our day-to-day into the AA. It’s a snapshot of where we are. The people, the ideas, and the objects that surround us are all part of who we are, and we needed to translate that. It also demystifies the myth of working alone. Friends shape our ideas and help us make sense of things. There is such a relational element to our practice. If we don’t acknowledge that at such an important moment of entering this new chapter, we’ll be neglecting everything that we stand for. There are certain things that we can’t detach ourselves from. They’re at our very core as people.

If you could each pick one object from the studio that reads as the most seminal in your thinking, what would they be?

TC: The seminal work is in the future.