The Sean Brown
Remix
Designing A Dream Space
with All the Right Rhythm
- Interview: Sumiko Wilson
- Photography: Brendan George Ko
There’s stimuli for every sense in Sean Brown’s Toronto studio apartment-cum-showroom. Vetiver and clove-scented incense fill the air, wine and cake are offered upon arrival, music videos from the late 90s and early aughts play on a loop. In the space where his most formative reference points live alongside his ruminations on the future, timelines coexist and eras blur together. “You don’t feel when time passes here,” Brown tells me.
This is what Brown seeks to channel with Curves, the homeware outpost that he co-founded at the onset of the pandemic with Iva Golubovic and Zachary Aburaneh. It’s their joint attempt to infuse interiors with culture, straddling an aesthetic that’s both aspirational and familiar. The label’s first viral products were handmade CD-shaped rugs paying tribute to Brown’s favourite albums—yes, the ones you’ve seen all over your feed fashioned after Lil’ Kim and Daft Punk classics. Previously, Brown also founded both NEEDS&WANTS, a line of luxury sportswear offering varsity jackets and satin monochrome sets, and The Art of Reuse, an online marketplace with curated vintage finds. In lieu of retail spaces, he would host his pop-ups in shipping containers, which he then reimagined for North by Northeast and The North Face. He’s directed shoots for brands like F. Miller, and even designed fonts and logos for artists like Baby Keem and SZA. He says that this was integral to understanding interiors. “In fashion, I learned about proportion,” he explains. “I carry that with me into the rhythm of a space.”
Featured In This Image: Curves by Sean Brown rug, Nate Cotterman vase, Nate Cotterman vase, Tableau vase and Fellow kettle.Top Image: Sean wears Jil Sander crewneck and Marni lounge pants.
Curves lives in the space post-Tumblr and pre-singularity, and the suffix ‘by Sean Brown’ denotes a certain degree of intuitive taste. Like Brown’s own feed, Curves’ visual language is vivid, whimsical, and intentionally unpretentious. Take the Archway Chair, which channels the mechanics of a traditional African birthing seat that caught his eye during an eBay exchange, fused with the architecture of a new cathedral in Paris he saw on Twitter. Or a spill-shaped floor mirror designed for reoriented fit pics.
When Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz’s 1997 track “Déja Vu (Uptown Baby)” appears on the screen, the 35-year-old artist, designer, and creative director inches closer to the TV and admires director Chris Robinson’s camera-work. “This song ended up being Grammy-nominated,” he explains. “They didn’t win, but they also didn’t clear the sample so they didn’t make any money.” Brown likens his own creative approach to reinterpreting existing sounds. “I don't think there's anything wrong with referencing the past, but how do you take the sample and make a new song?” His fascination with this era can be distilled down to what he often refers to as the purity of the approach.
More recently, he served as creative director for Daniel Caesar and Diddy, but now his focus is solely on Curves. He’s also preparing to expand from homeware to urban development with Hypatia, a new endeavor designing more considered, accessible homes. Does the excitement of seeing his designs pictured in someone's home match up to the rush of seeing them on stage? “It’s deeper,” he says. Literally and figuratively, the stage is a forward-facing entity, but at home, the intimacy is incomparable. It’s also more enduring.
When I first meet the three Curves founders, we’re in a bungalow in Toronto’s East End, where a flurry of set-ups and take-downs orbit around Brown. Months before, Brown’s team requested that he creative direct the shoot. “Every single thing I acquire or buy is thought about,” Brown says. “The side table, the vacuum, the lint roller, the candle holder, the ashtray, my salt and pepper shakers—everything. My approach is that if I buy a cutting board, I’ve thought about it. And that’s how I want my life to be.” So when he selected Alessi cutlery, he imagined it slowly cutting into a slice of tiramisu. And when he opted for the JW Anderson loafers, he visualized them stepping onto his technicolor Cluster Rug. Here, as he charts his course with Hypatia and continues to grow Curves, Brown opens up about perfecting his process and his pursuit of the perfect home.
Sean wears Marni sweater, Marni lounge pants and JW Anderson loafers.Featured In This Image: Curves by Sean Brown rug.
Sumiko Wilson
Sean Brown
What was the first step in transforming this into a Curves space?
Filling in the gaps. I can walk into a space and think, I would change that, I would rewrite that, we need this there, we need a speaker there. There are little things you can add and subtract, which I think is the essence of what home decor is—finding your personality and editing. The whole shit is just editing.
Have you always thought of Curves as a problem-solving endeavour?
Not in the beginning, no. I’m getting to that design sensibility of problem-solving, but right now it’s just filling gaps. So, do you need a puddle mirror on your floor? Function-wise, probably not. But it fills a gap.
Were there many versions of the CD Rug before it finally went out?
No. The concept was done, the factory sent the samples, and I was like, ‘Yo, I’m going to post it on Twitter.’ They [Zach and Iva] told me not to, but I was sure it would be fine. It wasn’t fine. So we had to react very fast. I actually did that with the mirror, too. We needed to edit a crack out of it, but I was like, ‘Fuck the crack!’ We posted it anyway and people pointed it out, but that made it more authentic. That’s the process.
Featured In This Image: Curves by Sean Brown rug and Tableau vase.
It’s kind of like that Bob Dylan album cover, where the photo is blurry because the photographer was cold. Is there a place for these imperfections in the Curves narrative?
Yes, because editing is part of the thing not being done. We’ll just continue to work and get it right. I know a few artists who won’t move a muscle until they feel like it’s done, but you can’t do that because then it will never be ready.
Are you a perfectionist?
Not enough to stifle the process. I'll let errors rock. I'm more about the perfect process.
Were you a colour inside of the lines type of kid?
Yes. Even when I ate, it was like, the peas go here, the rice goes here, the meat goes here, you don't overlap them. I don’t know why I was like that, but I’ve carried that into how specifically I like to design a space. Very specific, very regimented.
Do you have siblings?
I have an older sister, a step-sister, a younger sister, and a younger brother. I move like an only child, though. I also grew up in group homes and in foster care so I was alone anyway.
Has that experience impacted how you perceive home as a concept?
Only that I feel like I keep chasing the perfect home.
Featured In This Image: Nate Cotterman vase and Nate Cotterman vase.
Where did that idea first emerge?
I think just all the moving around. I’ve never been settled somewhere.
Where does settling into a space begin for you?
Layout first. Where is everything going? And then build out all of the other elements after.
The layout is how it pertains to the person dwelling in it—their productivity in their day-to-day.
What do you think is the most glaring problem to solve in the urban development space?
Consideration. Developers are considering the plot of land they’re going to buy and the communities they’re going to gentrify, but beyond that, they don’t care about the dwellers. If you don’t care about the dwellers, that means that you don't care about their quality of life or their way of living. So then you don't care about how the place looks, what materials you're using, how sustainable it is, you only care about getting the structure up and making the money. I honestly believe that if people can wake up and be happy about where they live, it'll make the world better.
Which designers are you most inspired by?
Probably Yves Saint Laurent, Zaha Hadid, and Erwin Wurm. I kind of mirror Wurm’s approach of not everything being functional, but being able to exist as art. Why does the mirror have to be on the wall? Why can’t it be on the floor?
Featured In This Image: Devialet speaker legs and Devialet speaker.
What kind of toys did you gravitate towards when you were a kid?
A lot of cars and a lot of Transformers. And then summer of grade eight, a lot of clothes. I got a job at a steel mill and I was making like $500 every two weeks so I started buying clothes.
Were you buying Pepe Jeans?
No, this was when Karl Kani just dropped. Then there was Rocawear, Sean John, Willie Esco, Johnny Blaze, Enyce…
So do you think that autonomy over your space started in your closet?
I think so. I had to get a sense of who I was in fashion and then it branched out into spaces.
Who had the best house on MTV’s Cribs?
I really, really liked the Cash Money Millionaires’ house on Cribs. They had tons of cars, Prowlers, Bentleys—it was just obnoxious. And Missy Elliott’s house was fire, too.
What excites you most about old issues of Vibe Magazine?
Vibe is one of the only magazines I've seen where there’s an ad for Sean John on one page, and then you flip the page and there’s an ad for Calvin Klein. It’s the merging of two worlds. There’s that intersectionality that I think is at the center of Curves, too.
Featured In This Image: Curves by Sean Brown throw blanket.
Describe the first bedroom where you felt like everything was exactly how you wanted it.
I’m not there yet. I'm getting there, though. I've designed it with Hypatia and I've laid it out, but I'm not physically there.
Is that something that irritates you? Always being in pursuit?
Like, why am I like this [laughs]? Yeah, like just last week, why was I itching to move? But I think that just stems from my need to not want to settle down. With creative, too. Like, always in pursuit of better.
You often warn your followers not to delete their old work. Where did that come from?
There’s this thing people do on Instagram—no judgement, it’s just something I've noticed, especially with artists—where they delete all their shit and then they only have 25 posts or 100 posts. I don't always want to feel like I'm someone new so I don't like who I was. I think instead of trying to hide the past or delete it, it’s better to just like let things rock. Evolution is so much iller than a full-out rebrand.
Is what you’re doing now what you imagined success to be when you were younger?
Yes. Younger me would be very, very proud.
Sumiko Wilson is a journalist and copywriter living in Toronto.
- Interview: Sumiko Wilson
- Photography: Brendan George Ko
- Date: February 18, 2022
