Tom Dixon

Tom Dixon is a rare bird in the design panorama. He didn’t study design or architecture or follow a classical training, he has music and rock – and motorbikes – in his blood. He doesn’t design for other companies and brands, quite unusual in the industry, but has made his own name into a brand and a company, doing things his own way.
Disco and motorbikes… that’s how it all got started. “In the late 70s I was a musician, I used to play a bit of bass guitar, but it was more disco than punk, and then I had an accident with my motorbike, I broke my arm… I crashed into a car…  I couldn’t play for a while, so I started making things and that became my job!”, Dixon tells me. His design career started by repairing his own bike, which is still a huge passion, that recently brought him to put his hands on a Moto Guzzi project, and from there he made the first chairs out of salvaged material and recycled rubber.
We are in his Ladbroke Grove headquarters, a Victorian Wharf building that once was the former Virgin Records studio, which he turned into a collection of his spirit, offering not only a shop but also a restaurant, the Dock Kitchen, overlooking the Grand Union Canal (but in the spring he is moving this concept, even bigger, to a new venue in King’s Cross).
We caught him between meetings with his American team, the studio Christmas party and a flight to China, Korea and Hong Kong.
Tall and thin, with a strong British accent and attitude, he speaks very fast, rich in jokes and irony, unexpectedly refusing to answer some questions… he defines clichés! His speedy mind and ingenious folly make him interested in many fields, super curious about everything and smart in his job and anything he touches.

Tom, what is design for you?
It just happened to be a fantastic way to live. But it doesn’t feel like a job. It feels more like a hobby! It’s a hobby that I managed to turn into a business that keeps me entertained.
When you were a child, what was your secret dream?
I have never had dreams… oh, actually when I was 5 or 6, I wanted to be a fireman… I liked the big red trucks with the sirens on!
Your everyday challenge?
My passion is making things and thinking of what they might become… I don’t separate designing from realizing and selling… I have many different jobs: engineering, sculpture, business and I am trying to combine all of them. I don’t think I would have been doing all of this if I had gone to an art school or a design course.  
Your inspirations?
I have a strange disease: I can’t go for a bicycle ride, view a sculpture exhibition or see a cloud formation without thinking and picturing objects. When people are talking to me and it seems I am not concentrating, which is most of the time, I am actually thinking quite hard about making something.
How about the role of Italy in your career?
I think Italy taught me that Design is a valuable tool in the industry. The Italians’ proper heartfelt love for design as a profession, as a catalyst for industrial development, was a revelation for someone coming from the miserable British 1980s experience.  
Let’s go to Firenze, where LUISAVIAROMA was born and physically is located. Do you know the city well? Any good memories?
Actually, I don’t know Firenze so well, only as a tourist, and then just one time at Pitti Uomo to present a collaboration with ADIDAS – time for Luisa to show me around?

Let’s talk about your most iconic products. Lighting first of all. You are able to create trademark ambiances and feel with your clusters. Why is this industry so popular and successful?
Always the most visible object in the room, it’s also the typology that seems to be comfortable with new shapes, new materials, and new technology. It’s the perfect plaything for a designer!
What can the right light change and add to an ambiance’s vibes and people’s attitude?
It can transform the mood of a space, and if badly done can ruin it. It can make a place look futuristic or romantic or unwelcoming.

S-Chair, part of the permanent collection of international museums. You started as a chair welder and maker, at first assembling odd pieces made of salvage material and rubber truck tires …
I made many versions of the S-Chair in many materials when I had my own studio in the late 1980s in London, maybe 10 different types: using rubber dresses from a kinky sex shop or recycled tires, or rattan, wicker or bulrush. I made a small production of woven rush, which probably exists in an 80s edition.
And then?
One day I was offered an exhibition at the very beginning of 10 Corso Como in Milano, by Carla Sozzani alongside Kris Ruhs and Marc Newson – for all of us the first show in Italy. She then introduced me to Giulio Cappellini, who offered to put my chair into industrial production, using recycled leather and textile. It was a hit and is still being made by Cappellini, but I am reintroducing the original shape in a new molded extra comfortable version.
Where do its idea and shape come from?
I have often been asked where the inspiration comes from and, honestly, the only memory I have is of drawing a small doodle of a chicken on the back of a napkin and thinking that I could make a chair from it. This one proves that if at first, you don’t succeed, try, try and try again, because it was a bad idea and ended up as a spectacularly ugly object.

You were one of the first ones in the industry, actually I would say the first one, to grasp with your intuition and propose a collection of candles and fragrances for the home. What is the ideal home ambience, feel and sound for you?
I like variety, and I think it’s possible to completely change your space with very few elements – the luminosity, the sound and the smells allow us to transform space with very light touch, and make it possible to adapt space to your mood.
Tell us more about you and your career life. Travel: you are always on the go, with the treasure of having toured the world many times. And cosmopolitism seems to be in your DNA since your birth in Tunisia and early years moving around with your parents.
That’s right. I was born in Tunisia, my father was an English teacher and my mother, half French, was a BBC journalist. I spent my early childhood in Morocco and Egypt before moving to England.
What were you like as a child?
I was a messy and introverted little boy, disorganized, with scrawling handwriting, an untidy room and grazed knees. I liked making things, drawing and reading, but I had no ambition to be a designer. And people who know me might say that not a lot has changed!
Going back to travel. Which cities or countries do you like the most?
I love India, Delhi is always amazing, and New York. But I love new surprises and new adventures, places I have never been to. I now long for Cuba, for Mali and for Detroit.
When it comes to you at work and your team, what is the quality you like most in people working with you?
Hidden depths.
And what do you value most in people, in general?
Innovation.
And to ask the opposite – what is the trait you deplore most in others?
Lack of compassion.
What would you say is your best virtue?
Ehh… you will have to ask someone else who knows me! I don’t feel virtuous.
Tom, is your job your life?  I mean, some people in the arts – or any field for that matter – very often live for their art, as a daily need and expression, for a total adherence between work and life…
Yes, there is almost no separation. I’m lucky to enjoy the design life, which takes me into new universes and knowledge almost everyday.
The rock stage as a young man with the band Funkapolitan, you as a nightclub manager, then as a welder and designer, the creative direction of Habitat, and your own brand and company… You seem to have lived at least 7 lives already! Something you haven’t done yet…
There still are so many possibilities I would love to explore, I am never really satisfied: a bridge, a phone, town planning, transport, electronics, maritime, low cost housing, a tent, bicycle, a bus, a nightclub, a fashion collection, a train station, an electric car re-charge station…. something to save the world.
And is your greatest regret?
This is a journalist cliché… I’ll take the fifth, sorry!
What still excites you and makes your eyes light up?
Still all of it. I still love a factory, I do love visiting factories, from Asia to Poland or Spain, and discovering manufacturing processes and technologies. And, as I was saying, I still love New York and Delhi.
You were saying that since you were a child you have loved books…What do you have on your night table right now – or on your iPad?
I haven’t read anything longer than an email or a magazine article for ages and ages. I miss it.

Any anticipation on the new collections?
Ehh… expect more luminosity, more color, more materials… and nothing else I can say yet!
Fashion, is it something that attracts you?
Right! Fashion people were always the first ones to buy my work, they are always interested in the latest ideas.
And also you grabbed from the industry the brand business model for your own design business…
I’m interested in the way that designers manage their own intellectual property and aesthetic and branding in a more concentrated way in the fashion industry. It doesn’t exist in Product Design.
Let’s go more personal. What do you like to do in your spare time?
I love cooking, drawing and… sleeping!
What is your most treasured possession?
Another journalist cliché… sorry!
OK, sorry. Music then? your background…
Through music I learned that you can create your own things. You just need to have an attitude, a point of view and then make something that people would buy.
So super last, but not least! You move at the speed of light! What is on your mind today?
Uhm… I never really think that fast – I’m thinking about what I could do that is properly useful.
What is its current state?
Chaotic and confused as usual, but with the occasional moment of clarity.