Nikolai and Simon Haas, the L.A.-based twins known for their design collaborations with Peter Marino and Mario Testino, have added another star name to their roster: Versace.
Their design project with Versace Home — a 12-piece homage to Donatella’s style — has made its debut at Salone del Mobile in Milan.
“The process is very important to us, it starts with a spark of inspiration and then becomes a tangible form. Donatella was the spark, and this furniture collection is our interpretation of the legend and the house of Versace.”
For the Haas brothers “It represents a vision of future luxury”
Donatella saaid ……
“As soon as I met the Haas Brothers, I knew that I wanted them to work on a special project for me, They have such energy and their ideas were so brave and bold.
“I love the new iconic pieces the Haas Brothers have created for Versace Home. They have captured the essence of Versace today, with pieces that are grounded in tradition while also looking fearlessly to the future. It’s amazing how they have taken elements from Versace’s fashion DNA and remixed them to make pieces for the home that are fresh and new.
I enjoyed working with the Haas Brothers so much, they also created some special graphic animal prints for my recent Fall 2013 Womens Wear show.”
versace haas fashion
Inspired by the themes like ‘rock and roll’ and ‘blonde glamour, this unique piece of furniture has been made from honeycomb brass, with visible patterns on the body.
The Upholstery as seen here, is black leather which is a signature part of all creations showcased by the Versace brand.
The primarily black-and-gold range features a club chair graced with Versace’s iconic Medusa head and a Bondage bench generously wrapped in straps.
Donatella Versace has even had one of the chairs designed in her honour. The chair was created to honor the style and glam rock´n roll of the Italian fashion designer. A futuristic throne made of bronze which reproduces a drawing stamped honeycomb with black leather. Classical art and at the same time, spirit of innovation for Versace Home.
“To me, this mix of the traditional with the new reflects the mood of Versace today and of course I love that it is named after me,” she laughed. “My home is decorated with contrasting styles, with classical pieces put next to those that are fresh and new. I can’t wait to introduce the Donatella chair into my own home.”
“Interiors have been part of my thinking about design ever since my brother Gianni first introduced pieces for the home in the Nineties,” added Versace. “He was one of the first fashion designers to create pieces for the home and it meant that, when you think of Versace, you think of a whole world – not just what is on the catwalk.
This is how Versace has always been, and it is why interior design continues to fascinate me today.”
Haas Brothers – published in the Wall Street Journal – Jan 2013
Twins Nikolai and Simon Haas are using their combined talents—a wild eye for artistry, traditional carpentry skills and a deep Hollywood Rolodex—to become some of the most innovative furniture makers around
Over the last 2 years, 28-year-old fraternal twins Simon and Nikolai Haas have become the wonder boys of the Southern California design world.
Together, they’ve conceived and fabricated everything from Cubist club chairs and globular brass vases to custom ceramic light fixtures and angel wings for Lady Gaga.
It’s only when pressed for a title that the pair admit to being furniture designers. Perhaps that’s because they see design as a broader calling: simply put, making things people haven’t seen before.
The Haas brothers’ sprawling industrial studio in downtown Los Angeles is half science lab, half art studio.
There, they experiment with raw materials like resin and metal, pushing these substances into shapes that seem to defy nature.
And experimentation is what facilitated their arrival as rising design stars: Simon and Nikolai used flat hexagonal brass tiles—typically able to adjoin only on a horizontal plane—to clad the rounded surfaces of a footstool for an exhibit of functional objets d’art at Manhattan’s R 20th Century Design gallery.
“We’ll find a material we like and do everything wrong with it until something comes out right,” says Simon.
In creating his “fungus accretion” vases, Simon brushed the rough surface of a ceramic vase with a clay-and-water solution until it built upon itself like a hand-dripped sand castle.
Despite their often-flamboyant style, the Haas brothers’ work is steeped in solid craftsmanship.
Raised in Austin, Texas, both Simon and Nikolai worked at their father’s stone-carving business and furniture company every summer.
“I would be the one up at 6 a.m., working all day long, and Simon was always the one who would wake up at noon and come in to do special projects,” says Nikolai. “If there was a chip in a fireplace, I would fill it in and Simon would faux-paint it.”
They were always yin and yang: Simon messy and Nikolai orderly; Simon the partier, while Nikolai drank his first beer at age 25; Simon gay and Nikolai straight.
But they always found common ground in creative projects.
“As kids we always complemented each other, so if one of us was bad at something, the other one got really good at it,” says Nikolai.
After living apart for a few post–high school years, during which Simon undertook formal art training at the Rhode Island School of Design and Nikolai toured in a band, they both ended up in Los Angeles, where their brother Lukas had already become famous as a Hollywood actor.
At first, Nikolai worked as a house manager and personal assistant to one of Lukas’s A-list wingmen and Simon as a restaurant cook.
It wasn’t until a powerful friend extended an off-the-cuff invitation to collaborate on a remodeling project that they decided to rent out a work space in downtown L.A.
Once the shop was up and running, word-of-mouth advertising was very good to the Haas brothers: Actors commissioned their furniture for party pads; Mario Testino used their one-off accoutrements for photo shoots; and Peter Marino and Johnston Marklee hired them to custom design furniture.
Business quickly grew to a point where they could no longer make everything alone, so they hired friends skilled in carpentry and ceramics to help out. Now they limit their time in work gloves to applying finishing touches—mostly to free up as many hours as possible for prototyping.
“We’re basing our work on a fashion model,” says Simon. “There are things that are ready-to-wear”—like their lucrative furniture line—”and then we’ve got the couture,” like the honeycombed brass stool, which took them two intensive weeks to craft. They’re planning to move to a larger shop in order to keep pace with demand.
The Haas brothers love L.A. for its abundance of raw materials, and will often scour factory warehouses and special effects shops looking for anything that intrigues them.
“Our relationship to material is so intimate,” said Nikolai. “What happens if we throw iron into resin and catch it on fire, or inflate a weather balloon or panty hose and pour plaster into it?”
What happens, in the latter case, is a vase resembling a bronze stalagmite. So far, the weight of success hasn’t taken the fun out of their work, and if they have it their way, it never will.
“We’ve only professionally been in a relationship for two years, but it’s really been our whole lives,” says Nikolai. “It’s not any different than it was when we were kids.”
