Sebastian Errazuriz's 12 Lovers
Sebastian Errazuriz shares the process of turning lovers into sculptures, and sculptures into shoes.
Do the muses behind your "12 Shoes for 12 Lovers" know about the project? How did they react? Many of the girls knew about the project because I asked permission to use their photos. Some I knew there would be no point in reaching out to, or it was impossible to get their contact info and we recreated the photos. The reactions were varied: Honey felt flattered and said she didn't know she had been important to me. Heart breaker told me she was originally torn between feeling embarrassed and feeling flattered but chose to feel proud to have a shoe designed after her and warned me if I ever gave out her real name she would kill me. I know Gold Digger is not happy but relieved her name or portrait don't appear.
Are the stories in chronological order? The stories are all completely true and correspond to different girls I dated over a 15 year period. They are not presented in chronological order but more like a "mix tape" trying to create a fun order between the different designs and the accompanying stories.
Was wearability a concern at all? Definitely, Melissa has always been famous not only for its collaborations with the best designers/architects (Karl Lagerfeld, Vivian Westwood, Zaha Hadid) but have also always managed to combine original styles with wearability and quality plastics. Preparing for the exhibition that would inaugurate the new Pop Up store in Miami we studied a lot of shoes and shoe proportions. For the past 6 months I have been looking at every girls shoes obsessively. I'm sure I was starting to appear like a shoe fetishist. There are two girls at the studio that are very into fashion and all my designs had to be approved by them. The models we are presenting are unique sculptural prototypes but are ready to be transformed into mass production shoes with a few minor modifications.
Do you have a favorite shoe sculpture/lover? I had a favorite lover but obviously can't disclose which one she is/was. My favorite shoe is "Cry Baby" there was something really nice about coming up not only with a new idea but also a type of shoe that looks like nothing else out there.
What are you showing at Design Miami this year? I will be unveiling a set of new "Painting Cabinets" with Cristina Grajales at Design Miami and I'm really happy I will be also be finally showing my new custom Racing Motorcycle at Art Basel with Salon 94 gallery."12 Shoes for 12 Lovers" is on view at the Melissa Pop Up Shop, 830 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. December 6-January 5, 2014.
