ISABELLE KOUNTOURE
Fashion director
One of the most passionate journalists on
Team Wallpaper*, Kountoure has overseen
her tenth biannual fashion issue with her
signature flair. ‘It’s being involved in every
story from conception through to final proof
that makes it such an enjoyable challenge,’
she says. Her sartorial tour de force whisks
us from the fashion powerhouses of Milan
and Peter Marino’s happy place in Paris to
the plains of Patagonia, the indigo fields of
Tennessee, a cult luggage label in Cologne,
an art-filled penthouse in Beirut and more.GEORDIE WOOD
Photographer
‘The massive scale, wide-open beauty,
overwhelming landscape – Patagonia was
just surreal, coming from Brooklyn,’ says
Wood, who travelled there to shoot our
story on sustainable wool (page 122). ‘My
abiding memory is of a young girl riding
around on horseback with her cigar-smoking
grandfather, climbing fences, wrangling
sheep. Such a badass!’ Back in Brooklyn
between international assignments, Wood is
busy documenting the flora in local parks.KENZO TAKADA
Fashion designer
This month’s recipe artist (see his miso
soup on page 226) has kept busy since
retiring from his namesake brand in 2000,
trying his hand at painting and furniture
design. While he maintains a supportive
presence at Humberto Leon and Carol Lim’s
Kenzo shows, Takada has also found time to
nurture talent of a different sort – investing
in Toyo, a Japanese restaurant in Paris (and
soon, Tokyo) run by his former private
chef Toyomitsu Nakayama.LOU STOPPARD
Writer
‘Chaotic curly hair, fabulous colourful
clothes. Francesco Risso is such a stylish
interviewee,’ says Stoppard of Marni’s
creative director, who played dress-up
for us at the brand’s Milan store, while
discussing his design approach, a year into
the role (page 101). Stoppard, also known
as a curator, editor and broadcaster, has
interviewed some of fashion’s leading names.
Her debut book, Fashion Together (Rizzoli),
explores the industry’s most fruitful and
dynamic creative relationships.MARTA REPRESA
Writer
‘I’m in awe writing about designers who take
the reins of an established fashion house,’
says Paris-based Represa, whom we tasked
with profiling recent arrivals at A-list ateliers
(page 091). ‘The talent a person must have
to juggle house heritage, financial pressure,
customer expectations and being able to also
explore their own identity within the house.’
Represa also checked in on a fellow Parisian
talent for us, watchmaker Antonin Mercier,
whose brand Laps is rethinking the face of
watch design (page 096).ESTELLE HANANIA
Photographer
Hanania’s images captured the dramatic
concrete curves, colonnaded corridors and
cavernous staircases of the Goetheanum in
Dornach, Switzerland – built in the 1920s as
a base for the teachings of Rudolph Steiner –
as the backdrop for our fashion story on
page 192. ‘The styling and the model became
part of the place,’ she says, ‘melting into
the architecture.’ A book of Hanania’s work
with choreographer Gisèle Vienne will be
published by Shelter later this spring.CONTRIBUTORS
060 ∑ ILLUSTRATOR: SPIROS HALARIS