FASHION Magazine

By Johanna Lenander

Sometimes there’s a strange appeal in being befuddled by an object. Tobias Wong’s surreal, fascinating and humorous designs have a way of instantly connecting with the viewer, even though you don’t always understand what they are about. His work is rife with poetic and provocative meaning, but you don’t even have to scratch the surface to like it. His pieces—a flower brooch fashioned out of bulletproof fabric and meant to be worn over the heart, an indecipherable puzzle made of mirrored pieces, and a hand-blown oil-burning “candle” whose name, Casper, is to be pronounced only “in French”—have an instant cool factor that makes them irresistible without explanation.

“I don’t care if people call me an artist or a designer,” shrugs Wong, whose creations intentionally blur the boundaries between the two disciplines. “It’s really about the work.” The Vancouver-born Wong quickly rose to fame on the New York design scene six years ago. Following stints in Vancouver’s Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design and the University of Toronto’s architecture program, he moved to New York to study sculpture at the Cooper Union School of Art. After he graduated, his first piece, This Is a Lamp—a bastardized version of Philippe Starck’s plastic Bubble Club chair, wired with glowing lights—became an instant smash hit.

“I didn’t realize how big it was going to be,” reflects Wong, who has since been deemed among Forbes’ top tastemakers (2007), been given the annual Brooklyn Museum/Modernism Young Designer Award (2006) and been named Wallpaper*’s Best Young Designer (2004). “I just didn’t think it was that badass.” His next piece did nothing to slow down his burgeoning reputation as the design world’s favourite enfant terrible. This time, Wong exhibited Karim Rashid’s book I Want to Change the World, carved into the shape » of a handgun. “I guess there was no one else in the design world who did anything like that at the time,” he says. “My work filled a void.”

It also has the unique quality of appealing to a wide variety of people. Wong’s fans include the most highbrow players in the business (such as MoMA’s architecture design curator, Paola Antonelli, who included two of his pieces in 2005’s Safe exhibition), as well as Lower East Side club kids who have seen his work in underground fashion magazines. His ability to bridge all kinds of cultural gaps speaks volumes about his ability to absorb and comment on contemporary society. “Tobi is one of the most astute designers of his generation,” effuses Julie Lasky, editor-in-chief of I.D., the international design magazine. “He has deep reserves of thoughtfulness that prevent his work from ever being precious or too self-consciously cheeky or puffed up with righteousness.”

For someone known as a “bad boy” or “merry prankster,” Wong seems remarkably egoless. He doesn’t keep samples of his own work, preferring instead to give what doesn’t sell to friends. He dislikes going to parties, abhors travelling and loathes being photographed. The complexities in his personality are perhaps summed up in the tattoo he wears on his right forearm, which reads “Protect Me From What I Want,” one of artist Jenny Holzer’s famous maxims. Holzer scribbled the words on Wong’s arm when he approached her at an art show opening in 2002. He then had it etched in permanent ink, thus co-creating » what is likely the world’s first and only Holzer tattoo.

Two years later, Wong joined a roster of international art stars like Holzer and Vanessa Beecroft to create Terminal 5, the controversial concept project at JFK airport. For the multimedia installation, housed in the abandoned Eero Saarinen–designed TWA terminal, Wong created a new gift shop space with items like a book of New York matches, and a chrome-plated box cutter engraved with the words “Another Notion of Possibility.”

In 2004, Wong decided to retire from solo projects and concentrate on collaborations. “I got tired of hearing myself,” he explains. “It felt like people were expecting me to do the same things over and over. If you bring in another voice, you have more room to experiment.”

One of his collaborators is Canadian designer Niels Bendtsen. In 2005, the duo made a sectional sofa that riffed on the Pentagon in Washington. With a five-angled shape, and cushions divided in three rings to resemble the outer rings of the original building, the sofa made its debut in the Safety Nest exhibition in Brazil and is currently distributed by Vancouver design company Bensen.

Another recent team effort was the infamous Indulgences collection, which Wong created with fashion designer Ken Courtney of Just Another Rich Kid. The project commented on the push toward rarefied luxury in consumer culture, featuring objects such as replicas of Bic pen caps plated in 18-karat gold, and gold capsule pills. The most notorious item, however, was a replica of a McDonald’s coffee stick commonly used as a coke spoon in the 1970s and eventually discontinued upon request from U.S. drug enforcement officials. McDonald’s caught on and sent a cease and desist order to Wong and Courtney’s distributor earlier this year, but not before the gilded spoon had been paraded in practically every design and art publication on the planet.

Wong’s fascination with consumerism has led to a few fashion-related projects. “I get a lot of my ideas when I go shopping,” he says. “It’s like going to a gallery or a museum to me.” A trip to the Fifth Avenue Gucci store a few years ago led to more mischief with Courtney. Wong discovered the label’s logo wallpaper, which he promptly bought and turned into posters, with Courtney silkscreening “I Fuck for Gucci” across the emblematic double Gs.

The exhibition that Wong created for Colette Meets Comme des Garçons, the Tokyo guerilla store from the Parisian fashion mecca and the Japanese fashion house, was a kinder, gentler exploration of fashion fetishism. Taking a “diamonds vs. black” theme, Wong divided the shop’s gallery space into sections, one side featuring items such as diamond-embedded dimes, and the other showcasing cultured pearls dipped in black rubber. One special edition of Comme des Garçons perfume featured diamonds marinating in the fragrance, while another had the bottle itself coated in a black-painted sheath.

Despite all the glamour and success that Wong has experienced in one of the world’s great creative hubs, he misses Canada. “I get tired of New York sometimes,” he says. “I miss the laid-back pace, my friends, turning on the TV and hearing intelligent news. It’s the little things that make you homesick.” Perhaps it’s his down-to-earth Canadian personality that makes Wong’s interpretations of luxury consumption so effective. “I’m a very practical person,” he says. “I just find indulgence so absurd.”

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