Destree Unveils Artist Collaboration in Paris
ART AND SOUL: There are many canvases for creative expression: French accessories and fashion designer Géraldine Guyot and her artist friend Ben Arpéa both used linen in a summer collaboration for her brand Destree.
Guyot faithfully reproduced the checkered motifs, potted flowers and sun-baked colors from Arpéa’s paintings, applying them to column dresses with circular cutouts ringing the waist, and her signature puff-sleeved jackets and band-collared shirts.
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“Destree and my work go very well together,” Arpéa remarked at a cocktail party Thursday night at the Galerie Camille Pouyfaucon, where the artist hung several new large linen canvases, and Guyot displayed her 10-item collection, dropping next week on Destree’s e-store and in its Paris boutique.
It’s plain that the artist and the French entrepreneur, who has parlayed her passion for modern and contemporary art into unique hats, handbags, jewelry and apparel, share an affection for geometric shapes, bold color and designs with a sunny, homespun character.
“We thought that for a summer collection his patterns would look amazing,” Guyot enthused.
For the event, Arpéa fashioned quirky clothing racks vaguely reminiscent of Memphis design, but wonkier and rough-hewn, washed over with an oil paint and sand mixture.
Guyot also enlisted a third bold creative, Spanish caterer Gabriela Palatchi, better known as Gabfoods, to dress a buffet table that seemed to bring Arpea’s aesthetic to life in cakes and other sweet treats.
Arpéa worked in hospitality and became a full-time artist during the coronavirus pandemic. He is now represented by four galleries, with Pouyfaucon describing his work as questioning “the century-old motifs and canons of classical landscape and still life, reinterpreted through a contemporary artistic language.”
Meanwhile, Guyot is hunting for real estate to open Destree’s next freestanding store, either Stateside or in Asia.
One year ago the Paris-based accessories firm she cofounded with Laetitia Lumbroso welcomed a host of high-profile investors, all female, including such bold-faced names as Beyoncé, Rihanna, Reese Witherspoon, Gisele Bündchen and Gabriela Hearst, along with venture capital firm Sequoia Capital China, at the behest of Angelica Cheung.
Handbags — including hero styles like the Albert — rank as Destree’s biggest product category, and some have been done up in Arpéa’s colors as part of the summer capsule.
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