Interview: Alessandro Simonetti

President’s in conversation with Alessandro Simonetti, our artist-in-residence for SS16.

How’d you get your start as an artist? 

I’ve been immersed in the visual world since I was a child. I spent part of my youth in Rome in the early 1980’s and have vivid memories of the raw scene that was the Trastevere in those years. Photographers and artists of all sorts hung out at our place. I was exposed to drawing quite early – it wasn’t until later that I got into photography, but remember handling cameras since I was really young. I studied art and can say that at about 16, I really started to shoot what I liked. At first it was in a really naive way, but compared to my mates at art school, it was much more deliberate.


You’ve been a New Yorker for a few years now, right? How has the city treated you? 

New York is still the place where I envision myself living for a while. Despite the fact that everything has shifted from the streets to online – it doesn’t really matter where you operate from at this point – the city is still generating so many interesting possibilities. Many things I’ve done here or people I’ve met could hardly have happened in my home country but NYC is a bitch.

You’re quite well-known for documenting subcultures around the world. How did that become something you focused on? 

I started to shoot what I was surrounded by, so at the beginning it was mostly hard core graffiti activities on trains, my skater mates (probably a dozen kids), and any kind of music that was coming from squats. These were the hidden aspects of subcultures that I lived in first person – they were reclusive aspects of society, and so even when self hidden, they still intrigue me as a choice of subject. A horserace in Kingston, Jamaica, underground fetish meetings in the U.S., and fighters in Senegal are all subjects I’ve shot that aren’t necessary related to a subculture in the way we think about the the Punk Scene, but aren’t necessary under any spotlight. That’s when I find it interesting. There’s a common thread in all my work, and its a sort of anthropological – not academic – interest in certain kind of people and behaviors in society.

Over time, I’ve stepped away from the sensationalism of documentary photography and the necessity of ‘explaining’ through images, and instead find myself getting closer to subjects. This is to the point that I decontextualize the subject itself, and am not concerned with relating the image to a concrete reference.

Tell us about the photo of yours President’s selected for their permanent collection. 

That image is from a negative of my early time in the USA in 2006. I was in L.A. for a story on weapons, and this was shot in Venice Beach.

I was captivated by how the kid playing handball was surrounded only by geometric cross-sections offset by greyscale and numbers. The numbers themselves are in turn dived into sections as stencils. The four blocks remind me of the iconic logo of Black Flag, designed by Raymond Pettibon.

I submitted a few images when President’s asked me to think of a subject that not only would work as an advertisement of the brand and personal collection, but would also work as a print on a T-shirt.


What do you consider your most essential tools as an artist? 

Artists have always been a reflection of their times, but if in the past we were be able to categorize an aesthetic in decades (60s, 70s, 80s, now 90s…), I feel that nowadays languages and trends last six months. Everything is digested so fast that an artist’s responsibility to read and representing his time has really become quite a challenge! I would say consistency is a good tool for an artist today.

Do you have any style icons?

My dad and Joe Strummer.


Do you think anything about your style – personal or artistic – is particularly Italian?

As Italian, I probably wouldn’t be able to see it. Still, I believe being raised in a country where every corner speaks of history, one is ingrained with valuable aesthetics. I don’t know if my origins are reflected in my style. You tell me…

What is it about President’s that resonates with you and your style?

I love simplicity, and I see many pieces that might be references to iconic pieces of Mods or Skinheads and I definitely love those styles. I’m also quite happy with the fact that the pieces are crafted in Italy.

Interview: Jey Perie of Kinfolk

President’s visited the Kinfolk Shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn recently to hang out with the guys and meet partner Keith Abrams and creative director Jey Perie. Last week, they welcomed the SS16 collection to their store with a party and an exclusive T-shirt featuring artist Alessandro Simonetti’s campaign photo for the season.

We interviewed Jey, who was looking fresh in the handpainted white/sky blue parka from the collection.

First up, give us the Kinfolk elevator speech. 
To me, Kinfolk is 8 years of friendship, successful design projects, exciting trips around the world and long conversations about the most random things in life… Besides that, we managed to open and run a bar in Tokyo, a café and nightclub here in Brooklyn, a multi-brand retail store and a clothing label.Who’s the “Kinfolk guy?” Who wears your stuff? Who shops here? We try to be as inclusive as possible. We have a pretty diverse (in both age and background) group of friends and associate and they all represent in one way or another the Kinfolk man. Our common threads is a love for Art and Music, traveling and all the pleasure that goes with it.
Who decorated the Williamsburg store? It’s so dope.

It’s a team effort, a lot of the Art and collectibles are actually from few of our partners’ personal collections. My focus is more the clothing and the brand selection. Our partner Salah Mason and our friend at Antifurniture have been doing a great job at curating a complete library of Art, fashion and design books.

Kinfolk is well-known for its judicious curation of brands – you guys have a very focused mix of established and emerging labels. hat eventually blow up in the fashion cities around the world. What drew you to President’s?

A friend introduced me to President’s in 2012 at FOG on Lafayette street. The store did not last but a good first impression always does. When doing our buy for Stone Island at M5 showroom I was happy to be reintroduce to the brand. The brand philosophy and aesthetic go perfectly with what we are trying to accomplish here at Kinfolk and it was the right time for us to bring President’s to our corner of Brooklyn.

Who are your personal style icons?

Serge Gainsbourg, Thelonious Monk, Moshiro Mifune, Fidel Castro.

Do you have a favorite piece or even favorite detail from the SS16 collection?

The simple white tee with President’s chain stitch is the piece I will be wearing the most myself. When I introduce the brand to customers, the piece I am usually the proudest to present is the white and sky-blue light weight parka. One of a kind print. It’s a unique piece.

Where do you guys hang out in Williamsburg?

When I’m not at Kinfolk, I’m usually down the street at Cafe Mogador. I also spend time in Manhattan where I have my studio, trying to combine the best of both borough.

Interview: Tag Christof

President’s in conversation with AW15/16 artist-in-residence, Tag Christof


Above: New Mexico, 2015. President’s A/W15-16 Campaign photo.

Much of your work focuses on America. How do you square that with being appointed for the campaign of a proudly Made in Italy brand such as President’s?

It’s funny, because I’ve actually lived much more of my adult life in Europe than in the states. I spent a year at a French university, I lived in Florence and Milan after that, and I did an MA at Central Saint Martins in London. Europe really became my home and the time I spent in Italy had a huge impact on the way I see America.

How did you first come across President’s? What was it that first attracted you in the brand, and what did you think when being asked to enter the private collection as the artist for the Autumn Winter 2015-16 campaign?

I have a few pieces from different past seasons that are staples not just in my wardrobe, but in my life. One is a beautifully made leather portfolio that I carry around every single day—I use it to hold my sketchbooks, film negatives, prints, when I’m on the road, stamps and postcards. The other is a super casual oxford shirt made of a rich, strong English textile. I wear it at least once a week and it still looks brand new. I just love the way the brand does clean, easy, modern men’s style in excellent materials.

When I was asked to be the featured artist for this campaign, I don’t think I fully realised at first what a huge honour it was. It wasn’t until later that it sunk in that I was following in the footsteps of Peter Sutherland, Ari Marcopolous, Joseph Szabo, and Hugh Holland. Those guys are absolute legends whose monographs I have pored over for inspiration for years.

President’s private collection is a long-term project, combining the world of fine art photography with fashion – we never show products in our campaigns. What do you think about this use of alternative imagery to convey a certain message?

The images in these campaigns are so much more authentic than staged, studio shoots with brand new clothes on beautiful models.

Your campaign photograph shows “Maude,” your 1973 Pontiac Grand Prix, being fueled up at an old Standard Oil petrol station. What do you think it is in that photo that represents President’s as a brand, and moreover the collection?

I’m someone who was very much caught up in the world of fashion and image in my teens and early 20s. I studied industrial design in college and I worshiped all the same style gods as the cool kids. But over time, the artifice really began to be something I grew tired of—cool is so transitory. When I began to take photography more seriously, I just naturally gravitated towards subjects that were as far away as possible from the world of stylists and image consultants.

Maude is a huge, garish car from a time when American car design was not at all subtle or pretty. Pontiac was a legendary old American car brand that went out of business a few years ago. Standard Oil was a mythologized, evil old corporation that was very consequential in the early history of the automobile in the U.S. – it was broken up in antitrust lawsuits almost a century ago, but its brand survives in strange ways. I read somewhere that Chevron Corporation, which currently owns the “Standard” trademark must use the brand name on a certain number of its petrol stations in order to maintain control of the trademark. So, every so often out on the road, you come across a “Standard” station, a zombie brand from a dead company that somehow feels slightly magical because of its rarity and because it was immortalised by one very famous Ed Ruscha painting and tons of iconic photographs from the 20th century.

In the photo, the giant old Pontiac is drinking gasoline from a dead corporation. It’s a complex set of relationships, but there’s something disarming and beautiful about the scene—it appears to come from a simpler time, even though it was shot in the present.

I think that sort of juxtaposition between honest, simple forms and complex layers of meaning is a good approximation for the way President’s does fashion. It’s a very refreshing thing.

Photographer, art director, editor—what do you define yourself as? How do you think your 35k+ Instagram followers think of you?

Everybody in the world today is an artist/DJ/beekeeper/sommelier… That trendy need to force multiple labels upon ourselves has begun to feel like insecurity or pretentiousness or presumptuousness. I don’t know what I am in one word, but I know I’m a keen observer—I would have made a great anthropologist! I am somebody who is in search of meaning in the strange things humanity does, in the strange forms it gives to cities and buildings and products, and in the strange stories we tell ourselves.

Instagram is a fantastic community. I’ve met so many amazing people through it. My followers are funny, though: the more bleak and more desolate the photos I post, the more likes I get. Recently someone called me an “economy class William Eggleston.” Even though it was probably an insult, I’ll take it as a compliment.

Five years from now: where are you? Is ‘America is Dead’ still alive?

I really think the project will be a lifelong quest for me. I don’t know what form it will take in the future—I’m working on a book starting this year—but I just hope that in five years, or ten or fifty, I will still able to be out on the road, looking.