EXCLUSIVE: King Kennedy Opens Retail Flagship in L.A. 

Regardless of claims that brick-and-mortar retail is lifeless within the post-pandemic age, Mikael Kennedy, the proprietor and curator of vogue and rug model King Kennedy, says it’s very a lot alive.

After being in enterprise for 15 years, the photographer-turned-rug supplier, who’s a favourite with the style set, has opened his first brick-and-mortar location within the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles. The situation is a flagship and a gallery house. Utilizing vintage rug scraps from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Kennedy’s clothes and footwear have discovered their area of interest. 

Prior to now, the model has been shoppable at Nordstrom, Todd Snyder’s web site and Mr Porter. King Kennedy has additionally collaborated on sourcing rugs for Burton Snowboards, Ralph Lauren, Membership Monaco and extra.

Freedom, chaos and “a willingness to embrace the accidents” are a number of the values that the style photographer has dropped at his work for model campaigns through the years that now translate into his product design ethos. 

For his rug sourcing, Kennedy appears to be like for items that channel the tradition and historical past of humanity, originating from Turkey, Iran, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North America’s Navajo Nation — and he appreciates imperfections and put on. 

“After so a few years exhibiting this assortment out of my non-public photograph studio, because the venture expanded, I needed to open this as much as the general public,” he mentioned. “King Kennedy can be a continually evolving house. There are deliberately no guidelines to any of this — simply observe the thread, see the place it leads, and hopefully, it’s one thing that grows and evolves eternally.” 

Right here, Kennedy sat down with WWD to talk in regards to the new house, the tales behind his rugs, his plans for future collaborations and product releases and extra. 

WWD: You’ve been within the enterprise for 15 years. Why did you determine to open a retail flagship now? Why a mixed gallery and retail retailer?  

Mikael Kennedy: I ran my enterprise out of my photograph studio for therefore lengthy, utilizing the rugs as props in shoots and to show for my very own enjoyment. Over these final 15 years, I discovered myself spending extra time speaking to individuals in regards to the rugs once they got here in than I did about my photographic work. It gave me such pleasure to throw these items on the ground in entrance of somebody, inform them every little thing I knew about every bit and watch their eyes widen. It simply appeared like a pure development to make all of it extra public-facing.  

The entrance half of the brand new house is the gallery and boutique, and the again half is my studio. This creates a pleasant technique to break up my day, to have individuals wander in, inform them why this all excites me after which return to my work within the again once they depart. I inform individuals they don’t want to come back in to buy however simply to go searching and ask questions. It doesn’t at all times need to be a cash change within the house, particularly when there’s a lot to be gained from dialog about artwork.  

I like the thought of King Kennedy functioning like an artwork gallery and beginning to present up to date artists’ work, as effectively. I’ve a number of painters and sculptors in thoughts whom I’ve spoken to about exhibiting right here and discovering methods to collaborate on clothes that comes with their work.  

WWD: What’s King Kennedy? How would you describe it to a shopper?  

M.Ok.: More often than not I simply inform individuals I’m a rug supplier. It’s easy and is an efficient begin to the story — it will get them within the door for a deeper dialog and places me on the earth that I need individuals to image after we are speaking. If the dialog continues, we are able to dive deeper into making clothes and objects out of the rugs.   

It is a examine of chaos and coloration, chaos and sample, and what these issues carry collectively once they work together. I don’t care what the medium is. I solely care in regards to the last output, what story it tells and what it evokes within the viewer. I’ve a pile of painters’ drop cloths that I’ve been accumulating through the years that can ultimately get become one thing. It’s all the identical visible language to me.  

WWD: How has being a former artwork and vogue photographer helped affect your model?  

M.Ok.: After I ran this enterprise out of my photograph studio, I had an outdated Turkish prayer rug on the wall subsequent to an aerial {photograph} I had taken of a forest in northern Michigan on a job. I clarify to everybody that they’re the identical visible language, coloration and texture and patterns.  

After I was focusing extra on images previously, Polaroids have been an enormous a part of my wonderful artwork and my vogue work. They felt like little work to me and the rugs themselves felt like work. I needed the artwork that I used to be producing to be a bodily object and I needed every bit to be actually certainly one of a form. The Polaroid movie I used was expired, or the cameras have been defective, and I’d embrace the chaos, the errors, the smudges and the sunshine leaks.   

Artwork is a really human factor and I needed humanity to be current in all — the filth, the grit and generally the blood smeared on the perimeters of the Polaroid. As Jackson Pollock as soon as mentioned, “I deny the accidents” — they’re a part of the work. I might use the identical language to explain the rugs, the damage and the imperfections deliberately woven into the items.    

Popping out of vogue straight into this gave me the language and the venue to place my model right into a context outdoors of simply the rug world. It additionally made getting up and operating as a model a lot simpler since I’d been working intently with a number of shops and magazines through the years as a photographer. After I confirmed up with one thing fully new such because the rugs, it wasn’t that tough to introduce them to individuals. My neighborhood within the vogue world — particularly in menswear — has been extremely supportive through the years as I constructed this model.  

WWD: Why is gradual craftsmanship necessary to you? How is that proven all through your designs and in your new retailer?  

M.Ok.: We stay in a world that appears to be dashing in direction of sterilization of house. I don’t know what has led the cost on this, however the rise of minimalism or “Apple store-ification” of house over the previous couple of years is so disheartening. It seems like a scarcity of perspective offered as a standpoint. It’s really easy to take away every little thing from a room, use some plywood and suppose you’re [American minimalist artist] Donald Judd.   

There’s a steadiness to be discovered between a maximalist design precept that I mess around with and the starkness of house that so many individuals are embracing. It’s not essentially gradual craftsmanship that’s necessary to me: slightly, it’s soulful craftsmanship. A portray can take 5 minutes or 5 years; I don’t care in regards to the time. I care in regards to the intention that’s embedded into the piece. All of that is about folks artwork, and what it means to us as people. To position these items in somebody’s dwelling seems like inserting life into their house.   

In my design and new retailer, I take issues as they occur. It’s about permitting for the chances for magic within the chaos of all of it, in the best way a sample lands on a shoe as soon as we minimize the material — it’s not managed, it’s free.  

WWD: What made you select to supply rugs originating from nations corresponding to Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan — locations which have preconceived notions for a Western viewers? What tales about historical past and tradition are you telling with these rugs in your model?   

M.Ok.: The fascination with these items began from a purely aesthetic place. I discovered an outdated prayer rug from the Caucasus Mountains within the assortment of a rug supplier who through the years grew to become my good friend and mentor earlier than he handed. The rug was from the Nineties. It had hand and knee marks worn into the weaving. I knew nothing about rugs on the time — the place they got here from, what they meant, culturally or traditionally. I simply knew that I used to be holding one thing magical in my palms, one thing that held the traces of so many lives in only one object. From the patterns to the weave and the damage, I used to be holding a map of human historical past.   

These rugs characterize to me maps of humanity. You’ll be able to hint locations the place cultures have come collectively and interacted a whole lot of years in the past, journey routes of generations shifting internationally, sharing and adapting their artwork. That is the significance of artwork; it’s the nice connector of cultures and humanity. Artwork is an unbelievable technique to be launched to individuals and locations totally different than our personal and to open up new worlds to the viewer. It wasn’t a aware selection to decide on these cultures, they only occur to be the locations that for hundreds of years have produced these items.   

The fashion I discovered myself most drawn to is from the Caucasus Mountains area, particularly for his or her extra geometric designs. As I received deeper into my obsession with these artistic endeavors, it led me to dive deeper into the cultures that made them and to study as a lot as I might in regards to the individuals and the palms that produced these works. As time has gone on on this venture, I really feel an immense duty to know what I’m holding in my palms, to know what it meant to the individuals who made them 100 years in the past, and to be respectful and protecting of that legacy. I work very intently with the communities and cultures that these artistic endeavors come from to be sure that I’m honoring who and the place they’ve come from.   

I’ve a really strict private morality behind how we repurpose rugs relating to what will get minimize and what doesn’t. For instance, Navajo rugs and Afghan Conflict rugs are all off-limits to me for repurposing. Rug dealing is a world commerce, and it has a legacy of storytelling in it. There’s a protracted historical past of individuals taking discarded and broken carpets and turning them into objects. It’s a apply that goes again a whole lot of years. What I’m doing now could be bringing fashionable designs and shapes into that market. To do this with out studying the historical past and tales of the communities who first made them can be improper and offensive. I see lots of youthful sellers as of late whitewash the historical past and tradition of those rugs by renaming them of their shops with cute little names, like calling a rug “Alice” or “Daphne,” as an alternative of utilizing the right cultural title. That drives me nuts and I attempt to name it out once I can.   

WWD: What’s subsequent on your model?  

M.Ok.: I say that I’ve no plan and I’m simply following a thread and seeing the place this leads. There was by no means any plan for this assortment to show right into a enterprise. My thoughts not often slows down so there’s only a fixed checklist I’m engaged on. Now we have a brand new assortment of brightly coloured footwear, mules made out of rugs, popping out in a number of weeks. We attempt to have small drops each few months of latest mules to maintain issues attention-grabbing.   

I simply completed weaving a sherpa fleece in Italy that we made some enjoyable attire out of that can be out in November, in addition to two new rug baggage that I’m very excited to launch in time for the vacations. I’ve a collaboration with Wagner Ski in Colorado popping out in December. We made 4 customized downhill skis utilizing rug prints from my assortment that folks will love.