In service and servitude: Bless, a dogma or philosophy against ‘redundant’ work

«Everything has the right to exist, as long as the person who creates it takes some responsibility», an interview with Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag of Bless

Lampoon interview with Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag of Bless

While mass market behemoth companies flood the already overcrowded market with cheap, functional objects that no one really needs, how does Bless decide which objects are sufficiently overlooked that they warrant reinterpretation? 

«Everything has the right to exist, as long as the person who creates it takes some responsibility and figures out why this piece should. That’s the Bless way of approaching things. When we create something, we observe: Does it already exist? Did someone else do it better? Then we would just purchase it from them, because why should we do something similar? It’s a personal way of taking responsibility for what we create. We can create reality as we think it should be or contribute, at least, to the time in which we live. If more people believed in the things they created then there could never be too many things», opens Desiree Heiss.

Introducing Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag

Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag founded Bless in 1997. For over a quarter of a century, the pair have been operating as self-determined «situation designers» that, though originating from a fashion background, pursue limited editions and novel collections of everything from N°00 Furwigs, N°08 Stonemassageslippers and N°24 Wooden t-shirt, to N°41 Workoutcomputer, N°53 Bookmarkcushion and N°78 Leatherified Objects – numbered, cataloged and tending to subvert traditional, pre-categorized disciplines.

After meeting in the early Nineties at a French fashion student prize and immersing themselves in the Parisian underground scene, in 1995 Heiss and Kaag collaborated on their first joint project: Debut Suntop, a prototypal semi-transparent woman’s top produced at home with leftover materials and sincerely meant for use in daily life. An embodiment of their signature pragmatism, though erring on the absurd, together they developed a manifesto and working system located firmly within the quotidian everyday – despite the logistical challenge of Heiss residing in Vienna, before relocating to Paris where she lives and works today, and Kaag in Berlin. 

Bless’ early collaborations: N°00 Furwigs, N°01 Bootsocks and N°02 Disposable tshirts

Faxing, mailing and phoning ideas to one another before the innovations of FaceTime and video call, early collections saw the release of singular products employing in-house production. In pursuit of autonomy over ‘commercial success’, N°00 Furwigs, N°01 Bootsocks and N°02 Disposable tshirts relied upon foundational fashion techniques. Over time, and compounded by the early momentum gained from a collaboration on Martin Margiela’s Fall Winter 1997/1998 collection, Bless began to present extrapolated garment collections – though comparably moderate and refusing to conform to fashion’s biannual cycle. Motivated by persistent experimentation, today Bless is limited by neither medium nor technique, moving into novel and unexpected domains with no guarantee that collections will include ‘fashion items’ at all. 

Bless’ apartment-showroom in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg

Heiss and Kaag prefer to design few but valuable items that meet their personal needs. Each collection builds upon the other in an almost familial structure. Rather than being retired after a period of limited availability, Bless products are made perpetually ‘available upon request’ via a comprehensive, and humorously phonic, archive-website.

Although subject to change at Bless’ discretion, Heiss and Kaag retain full autonomy and flexibility over their morphing system of artistic production and distribution, challenging consumption through the playful subversion of fashion and contemporary art conventions applied across varied exhibition, display and marketing strategies. Presented in context, former collections have been showcased at museums and biennales, football tournaments, housewarming parties and swimming pool hang-outs — as well as at Bless’ permanent apartment-showroom located on a residential street in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, which appears as if it belongs to an obsessive collector.

Sustainable consumption, social responsibility and the shift towards civic-mindedness

As the global consumer class prepares to approach nearly 4.8 billion by 2030, according to the European Commission, emphasis on consumer behavior grows. Women, who comprise the leadership of Bless and represent seventy to eighty percent of consumption, are expected to wield significant purchasing power. Likewise, the shift of economic power from the West and Japan to emerging economies in the East and South is expected to reshape global consumption trends. 

The consumer choice dilemma is evolving into an opportunity to address local and global societal issues, from pollution to wealth inequality. Despite a projected increase in demand for resources, there appears to be a growing Megatrend towards sustainable consumption and the support of socially responsible brands, a reflection of an overall  shift towards wellbeing and civic-mindedness.

Bless’ ‘networked’ social production: collaboration and overlapping value systems

Preceding contemporary discourse on sustainable design – an area that urgently calls for alternative perspectives – Bless demonstrates a longstanding ‘networked’ social production, preempting strategies such as textile repurposing and upcycling as referenced and actively redefined in N°10 Scarves Sponsored by, which saw vertical cut-outs produced from repurposed goods courtesy of brand sponsors, and N°12 Team-ups, a further formalization of collaborations between Bless and other brands.

Within European society, a plausible future-oriented outcome predicts greater emphasis on collaboration and the sharing of tools, equipment and facilities – a strategy that, for Bless, began an earnest response to early economic precarity and the inherent conflicts between commercial and artistic interests. Bolstered by a network of collaborators, from Maison Margiela with N°00 Furwigs to Artek with N°60 Lobby Conquerors, Bless has periodically partnered with companies with whom it shares overlapping value systems, providing reciprocal access to each others’ intimate universes. 

Design Miami/ 2023: a case study of exemplar collaboration 

While most collaborators have been as small and niche as Bless, in 2023 the trans-disciplinary studio presented an unlikely collaboration with Fendi for Design Miami/. Together, Heiss and Kaag examine the collaboration as an exemplar case study of how to go about sharing knowledge, savoir faire and heritage techniques in a promising future. «Creative Consult Simon Parris discovered our work and works in connection with Fendi. He proposed for us to collaborate on the Design Miami/ booth», recalls Kaag.

Although it was not immediately obvious that they should say ‘Yes’, as they don’t believe in design fairs, Kaag concedes: «We felt tempted. To get an offer to collaborate with a company like Fendi, this was an opportunity. At the same time, we thought, we are comfortable in our niche, we like to discuss our themes, our homemade product-solving solutions, in a private manner with our small group of admirers. When we got approached we were in a stressful moment – in a positive way. We had our 25th Anniversary coming up and we were busy with preparations», as hinted at by the title of their book, Celebrating 25 Years of Always Stress with Bless.

Kaag continues: «Fendi could see that perhaps we would be a good potential partner, but that we had too much pressure for us in our own lives going on, so they proposed that we could postpone the collaboration for one year. That had never happened to us before. When people approach us to get whatever merchandized product for their line, or campaign, they are usually only willing to function within their own frame. For such a partner to see that they could only get what they wanted from us when they gave us time, that formed the basis of our partnership. We met with Fendi and we were quite surprised. On a human level, it was a nice contact experience for us. We wanted to know more, to get deeper and to understand: what makes people who work for Fendi so happy?’». 

Fendibackfrontals: an exploration of the the ‘public frontside’ and ‘private backside’ of Fendi’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome, Italy

Between December 6 and 10, 2023, Bless presented Fendibackfrontals at Design Miami/, perhaps to be interpreted as a tongue-in-cheek provocation of the terms ‘backside’, a person’s buttocks, and ‘full frontal’, a nude figure with full exposure. 

A detailed inventory of both the public front and private back of house, the architectural intervention comprized four double-sided paravents arranged in a corridor formation conceived by Bless and realized in partnership with Fendi Casa, founded in 1988 by Anna Fendi and Alberto Vihnatelli. The aisle-facing or ‘public frontside’ of the paravents depict theatrical 1:1 trompe l’oeil wallscapesof Fendi’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana headquarters with Neoclassical romanità interiors and Nero marble statues printed on fabric. 

«Through the wallscapes, with the photo documentation of the Fendi environment, the installation has an emotional charge that is present, imminent even. These are not neutral pieces», explores Heiss. Meanwhile, an alternative environment is created on the ‘private backside’ where micro-universes transplanted from the headquarters’ functional basement are set against lacquered wood printed walls and furnished, although in moderation, with functional seating, table and storage elements in rosewood – an aspect which some visitors will have missed if taking only a cursory view of the booth. 

The cornerstone of the Fendi-Bless collaboration: a series of personal interviews and touching anecdotes kept private

The cornerstone upon which the collaboration was founded, a series of months-long personal conversations and interactions with Fendi craftspeople, staff, and leadership, eluded the booth entirely. «We come from a slow design background, which means we are not interested just in designing but in adding to what is existing already. We had to understand whether Fendi could be in tune with our kind of approach. In saying ‘Yes’ to the personal interviews, they understood that even though we did not intend to publish them, that there was to be no visible external value, we needed them in order to be able to do our work. When Fendi accepted that we could do the interviews, we saw there was an intention from their side to allow us to dig deeper», recallsHeiss. 

Though many touching anecdotes come to mind, Heiss is hesitant to share them: «We want to preserve them in a private way. These interviews were not formal, but personal and straight away joyful, funny; we laughed a lot. It made us just want to know these people. They are not just doing a job». One might imagine something akin to Koolhaas Houselife, 2008, an architectural film by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine in which the pair explore Maison à Bordeuxthrough the daily chores of its mischievous and much adored housekeeper, Guadalupe. Set to Johann Strauss II’s Accelerationen Waltz, Guadalupe candidly leads the filmmakers around the iconic architectural home, exposing both the project’s merits and faults with humor and critique – all the while caddying around impractical mops, brooms, vacuum cleaners and buckets. Though similar in their approach, contrary to in Bêka and Lemoine’s film, Heiss and Kaag’s in-depth personal interviews and exploration of the Fendi headquarters find both the ‘public frontside’ and ‘private backside’ to be of equal quality. 

Reflecting Fendi’s Couture Maison heritage and high-level craftsmanship

«There was this high quality aspect to whatever Fendi product you would hold in your hands, made by this House. As we sometimes do in-house productions and are fighting situations where the machine is not good or not specialized enough, we wanted to reflect this high-level craftsmanship in the collaboration and the outcome for the booth», recalls Kaag. «That there is this backside, and this backside is pure quality». 

Thus, the collaboration employed high-level craftsmanship techniques, such as an Intarsia fur workmanship chosen by Bless in an homage to Fendi’s Couture Maison heritage. Preceding, in places, the creative and functional aspects of the design, Heiss explains: «This craftsmanship manifested in the Intarsia work – not many companies today can do this anymore». 

Employing Fendi’s Intarsia fur workmanship to replicate ‘unspectacular’ scenes

Intarsia began as a practice of wood inlaying that used varied shapes, sizes and species of wood – and at times ivory, bone, or mother-of-pearl – organized by grain pattern and color to create mosaic-like images with the illusion of depth. Originating in Egypt in 700 AD, the technique was later brought over to Europe where it became the centerpiece of decorative schemes, exemplar solid wood floors, walls and tabletops. Reimagining this technique in hand-carved offcuts of archival fur — assembled, cut and sewn back together by hand — Fendi’s Intarsia fur workmanship produced an intricately illustrated fur blanket replicating a daily scene from the House’s atelier in shearling, printed calf and lamb leather and Merino wool. 

Heiss continues: «We transformed a picture that would not normally be considered worthwhile to be transported into such a technique. That was done on purpose to give value to the back of house area and to all the people that were involved in the backend». And what of the several household items, ordinarily banal and unspectacular, that make up N°78 Backfrontals Leatherified Objects, such as a broom upholstered in goatskin glove leather and cleaning supply bottles in upcycled shearling and furs sourced from the Fendi archive?

«It’s about giving value to things that are part of our lives and that normally are not looked at or are hidden away. It’s to emphasize – in Germany we would say these ‘umscheinbar’ [nondescript or inconspicuous] pieces – and to give them their due attention. To say that they have their reason to be and they should have a reason to be looked at because they are highly supportive and without them we cannot do».  

Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag on design as critique

While Kaag suggests that designing, in a broader context, is their way to «critique things», Heiss counters: «It’s not really a critique. It’s an alternative perspective. When we design, we bring something to the planet that excites us and often creates a whole new category of furniture that does not exist». When asked if criticism holds a rightful place in the climate in which we currently live, or whether it is more valuable to show, through their own work, the potentialities of how something can be done, Heiss answers: «I don’t believe in criticism in this kind of academic way, although it’s right that you have work and you have critics who try to interpret it and put that work into a deeper context». In this way, Bless pursues an a-critical view of those who think or live differently from them. Their work itself, however, could be defined as critical, in the rigor of its market research to identify those products which they wish to address — especially when considering that over 30,000 new products are launched into the market every year, according to Harvard Business School.

A dogma or philosophy against ‘redundant work’

Although the pair put themselves at a distance from the work of other designers, they remain insistent that this is not out of cynicism but rather an attempt at not overcrowding the market. A dogma or philosophy not against ‘work’ itself but rather against ‘redundant work’. «You have even more elegant words. It’s exactly as you have put it. I don’t know how familiar you are with what we have done in the past, but ‘Fendibackfrontals’ was a great chance to give insight into how to not overcrowd the world with more design products and that was absolutely our main aim, to emphasize this. It is seriously meant to be a furniture piece that people would like to have in order to divide a space. In the end, there was a practical aspect to each of the elements that we displayed there, but as a formation, as a statement for the booth, it was about this emptiness that we created», explores Kaag. «That there is only this front side and back side, that there are only these utility elements — besides maybe the Intarsia fur blanket, but even this could be somewhere you might hide to take a phone call or to rest for a moment and keep yourself warm».

Studio Bless

Bless is the creative platform established by designers Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag. Though formally trained as fashion designers, the duo has always produced more than simply clothing, consistently resisting conformity and conventional fashion formats. 

Amelia Stevens