Artist Donald Robertson's Nutty New Side Project
Coco Chanel, photographed by Henry Leutwyler
Estée Lauder Creative Director Donald Robertson may be the mastermind behind some of the brand’s most recognizable beauty campaigns, but he’s also a beloved fashion illustrator who is probably best known for his whimsical and delightfully prolific drawing-filled Instagram. The artist’s latest endeavor? Fashion is Nuts, a clever, 40-page book that features fashion’s biggest stars (think Karl Lagerfeld, Anna Wintour, and Kanye West) in their traditional garb, reimagined as painted walnuts and photographed by Henry Leutwyler. We spoke with Robertson about his zany new project and how inspiration comes from the most unlikely places, like leftover Christmas snacks.
Yahoo Style: So tell us a little bit about the project…
Donald Robertson: About my nuts?
YS: Well, yes! How did you first come to the idea?
DR: Ok, so, on my Instagram, my followers are kind of a hungry mob, and so I feel like I need to come up with new stuff every morning. People get tired of one thing, so I’m always trying to figure out ways to surprise them. And we had a bowl of walnuts that were left over from Christmas and I was staring at them, and I thought, ‘Those kind of look like heads.’ The next thing you know, I was down in the basement painting all of them and I thought, ‘These are kind of cool!’ And then I started to post them, and oh my god, people went crazy!
Karl Lagerfeld, photographed by Henry Leutwyler
YS: That’s fantastic.
DR: But the insane thing about Instagram: you can do this crazy art project with your friends, and then the next thing you know, Sarah from Colette sees it and wants to collaborate. This is the world we live in right now. How spectacular is that? Then, Ruba’s good friends at Dashwood Books wanted to do a zine signing. I was like, ‘This can not get any crazier.’ That’s when we came up with the hash tag, ‘fashion is nuts.’
YS: So, how did you pick the different fashion icons and figures that you were going to focus on?
DR: So, my Instagram is a way of sort of figuring out who your favorite people are. These are all my stars: Karl Lagerfeld, Anna Wintour, Grace Coddington, plus all of the really great nuts of the world like Lynn Yaeger, Iris Apfel. Then we have Hedi Slimane who is groovy nutty.
Grace Coddington, photographed by Henry Leutwyler
YS: What else excited you about the project?
DR: The fact that we’re getting all this attention in a sort of an anti-focus group way is something that all three of us are very excited about. We are in full support of being completely nutty and coming up with things out of left field. And we’re all totally exhausted by content. We’ve all seen it all, so you really have to struggle and come up with something original to get people’s attention.
YS: And where can we find everything—besides on Instagram?
DR: There is a book signing on February 13th. Then there’s some groovy party at the Standard Hotel on the 18th. This is what I’m saying: who knew? Walnut parties!
Fashion is Nuts will be released in a limited edition of 1,000 copies online starting February 11, and at Colette in Paris on March 2
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