Basso & Brooke, Amelia's magazineBASSO & BROOKE
Amelia's magazine
Snow falling outside, it’s a pleasure to be welcomed into Chris Brooke and Bruno Basso Brixton home. With spent Agent Provocateur candles on shelves, fairy lights strewn across shabby sofas and visiting friends feeding their pet pit-bull, its familiar, threadbare charm is in marked contrast to the high-beam, precision cut and expertly printed womenswear the couple have launched for Spring/Summer ’05. For Basso & Brooke it’s all about contradiction.
Chris completed an MA at Central St Martins and jobbed with Joe Casely-Hayford before styling the likes of Kylie, Pink, Robbie Williams and – oh yes, oh yey – Steps. “I was a fan before I started working for them. I am a bit of a pop tart,” he confesses. Bruno was an art director in his native Brazil before relocating to London in July 2002 and three weeks after arriving, their eyes met across a crowded room. Was it lust at first sight? “Yes it was!” Bruno shouts over Chris’ dirty laugh. “It was a meeting of minds actually,” clarifies the latter. “We both wanted to be doing something more creative so decided to collaborate.”
Together they pioneered a new method of digital printing onto any surface - from leather and silk to wood and metal - and began producing homewares such as oven gloves and tea towels. They then entered the inaugural Fashion Fringe competition and stole the £10,000 prize with their debut capsule collection. Entitled ‘The Garden Of Earthly Delights’, the winning mix of voluminous jackets, billowing skirts and skin-tight jodhpurs feature Basso & Brooke’s signature power prints. Seemingly pretty and colourful from a distance, proud penises and eager vaginas reveal themselves upon closer inspection. Deliberately shocking? Maybe. Highly original? Definitely.
“I don’t think it’s offensive. It’s an invitation to delight and to seduce,” Bruno explains. “Our clothes are fantastical but there is a really blunt element too, like a slap in the face with the softest leather glove.” The sheer level of semiotics is breathtaking and has garnered some strong reactions. “One journalist called us misogynistic for putting penises all over a woman. It’s fun to think we have offended someone with a piece of silk,” Chris says of their assault on received good taste. “We have a dress that is completely covered in black cocks with two on the back spurting - it was a bit too much for one of our stockists. But we have total creative direction of our company and we’re going to play with strong issues.”
Stimulated by home grown renegades McQueen and Westwood and aspiring to the OTT excesses of Versace and Gaultier, Chris and Bruno like to think big. The next collection focuses on the myth of the Succubus, the monstrous siren who seduces men only to devour them, and they’ve also set their hearts on expanding into interior design. “We’ll start with a hotel room and go from there. Ultimately though we want our own airline,” Chris half-jokes. So what would you serve for supper on Basso & Brooke Air? “Willy Wonka chewing gum that tastes of dinner. And for desert, a balloon filled of mint air. As for uniforms, maybe none.” Basso & Brooke – going mile high.
Stocked at Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, Browns and Harrods www.bassoandbrooke.com
Story and styling Helen Jennings
Photography Elina Simonen www.elinasimonen.co.uk
Hair and make up Anu Levy
Model Ulla @ Models 1