Inside the Curated Chaos of Dusty Deco's Edin Memic Kjellvertz - Friends of Friends / Freunde von Freunden (FvF)

When we moved from Sweden, we had these vintage galleries, and life was moving too fast, so we wanted to take a break, to slow down. Lina’s mother already lived on Mallorca back then, so we were a little familiar with the island. 6 months into living on Mallorca, we decided to close the store in Stockholm to build our own brand with our own design, and with the pandemic we were kind of trapped in Mallorca. Our inspiration have always been things that we really love, that we want for our own house. My wife’s dream has always been to do the set design for an Almodovar film. When we moved to Mallorca we moved more towards this aesthetic. Still: Mallorca didn’t really change our looks much, it probably rather strengthened them. The skies are blue, and the ocean is, too, and that does something to us. And that has also progressed the design into a certain direction. 

Neither my wife nor I are trained designers. We are inspired by films, music, people we meet. We trust our gut feeling. And this can go very fast. We see something on the street and it can influence our work straight away. On the island, you see a lot of rounded shapes, a 60ies  and 70ies vibe, art deco, it’s all a big mix. It’s always in the back of our heads, and then it pops up at some point, and then it just works.

We never slow down, so the adrenaline never subsides. When it’s been too intense, I always need the beach – one of my favourites is between Illetas & Palma, we call it the hidden staircase, as it’s nestled between two hotels and a parking lot. The location is not so nice, but then a few stairs down and the ocean just opens up. It’s often very empty. Me & my wife often go once we dropped the kids.

We have a small house in Porto Christo. It’s got a 90ies vacation vibe, there’s even a Burger King at the beach – Rafa Nadal is from there. We really enjoy it, it’s very authentic.

And Bar Blau restaurant in Portocolom – we really like it there. There are so many places around on the island, you can enjoy a new place almost every weekend. We still enjoy exploring, even after all these years. The kids are getting older, so we can also go to smaller places, finally explore the cliffs, and so the island evolves. 

When I’m at the beach, I really don’t care how many people are around me at that moment. I can always fall asleep, I relax immediately. The same is true about coming to the showroom: We don’t live there – so it’s my sacred place. I can put on my favourite jazz album, open the doors, and just stare into the space. It’s great to get the energy back this way.

I curate all the time: My mind is constantly either curating spaces or finding new ideas. The head is always turned on. Our design inspiration always comes from things we see in our daily lives. When I see an empty space, I always think about how to improve it, what we could do in it. It takes 2 seconds and it’s fully decorated in my mind. I am a dreamer. I also love looking at properties that are far too expensive, but I love looking at them and imagine what we could do with them.

My family. We move houses all the time. We just moved into a new house, and every time we moved it’s kind of our dream house. We’ve moved around 20 times since I met my wife. Our life is packed into boxes. Sometimes we find boxes years later, and are surprised by what we find.

Why am I saying all of this? We’re not too attached to any specific objects.

The things we really cherish, they are things we picked up during our travels, and the drawings from our kids. Quite a long time ago we bought a pair of candlesticks – two monkeys holding them. They were not too expensive, but quite expensive for us at the time. And for us the value is the memory. We also have an artwork that has been with us for a long time – a painting of a naked sailor. The kids always make fun of it – so it’s always a fun story to tell.

I really like to have music around me. I pretty much always listen to music. The first thing that I do when I come to the showroom: I start music. For me, a room is not complete without music. I am quite  melancholic in my music taste. My wife is different. We both like the old 60ies, 70ies, rock, indie. I am more of a jazz person, like more classical baroque, slow, piano, light guitars. Melodies are really important to me.

With smells, I am very picky. When it’s the wrong smell, my eyes play up. So when I sometimes visit people and they have scented candles on that I hate: I blow them out. I really like classic incense, burning it just a little bit. I like Palo Santo, just a hint, not too much. When you enter a room, I think it’s important that all senses get a tickle in the first 10 seconds. It needs to hit immediately.

And there’s light. Dimmed light. A lot of dimmed lights, actually. I like it like a scenery, a film set. Spotlights on furniture, on artworks. Mood lights – everything from table lights, floor lamps, on different levels. It shouldn’t hit your eye, you shouldn’t be blinded. Lighting is so important, how you set the scene. Good lighting is an art, it’s something else. I’m more of an evening person, and that’s reflected in my favourite lighting. I love candles, a fireplace. And I definitely spend far too much money on candles.

It definitely changed the perspective quite a bit. Here on Mallorca, you spend more time with more people. The weather allows you to spend so much more time outdoors, there’s longer outdoor dinners all the time. So of course we think significantly more about hosting a lot of people in our house. And it’s so much more spontaneous out here. Especially also now that we have kids. When I go back to Sweden, I need to call my friends three months in advance to book a dinner slot in their diary. Here it’s like “what about now?”

You meet people, and there’s no rush. And people are more eager to have a connection. So you design spaces that involve more people in them.

People in general are more open minded, people dare to connect more, and it’s less stressful, people have more time. Our collaboration with Matthew Williamson came very intuitively, for example – we first hesitated, but then just asked him. He agreed. And that became a friendship.

Now, post pandemic, there are more creative people coming to Mallorca, and that also attracts other interesting people. And it’s growing, and also attracting younger generations now: When I was in my twenties, Mallorca had a different image, but it has shifted. All of Europe are attracted to the island these days. Now there’s even direct flights from New York. The life style is great. The art scene is great, too.

Of course. I still buy a lot of vintage, even now that we produce our own, new pieces. It’s a tricky one. We live in a consumption-oriented society, buy things all the time. I kind of like the mentality of buying things that are old. The design in the past is so much nicer than it is today. It’s also hard to reinvent the wheel again and again. A lot of the best things have already been made. When we now produce things, my dream is that my kids and their friends will buy our pieces in an auction, that our pieces survive over time, and become classics. We want to build a legacy brand that continues long after we cease to be. 

For our own house, we don’t buy new things really, apart from the odd visits to IKEA for the kids, for examples. I go to the flea market every Sunday in Mallorca, so I add something to the mix all the time. It’s the mix that makes it ours.

When buying vintage pieces I learned along the road that I should never hesitate. It’s always gut feeling. As soon as you start hesitating, that’s where the vulnerability kicks in. I never went to a design school, I can’t draw. But when I see something, I just go for it. I never let myself become unsure. I usually don’t doubt. And If I don’t, everything takes longer, and then it’s gets very vulnerable. So I don’t really allow myself to feel vulnerable, I don’t think I should.

What I’m scared of is that things will break, that our pieces don’t hold what we promise. Production can always do wrong, but in general I’m mostly “scare-less”. 

There are a lot of people that inspire me. My end goal and dream are hotels. So I would probably go for André Balazs – and I would love to talk to him about Chateau Marmont, how he started the Standard Hotels. But if I’m not allowed to talk about that, our conversation would probably revolve around all the people he met. He must have so many cool stories about all the people that entered his places, his hotels.

It would probably say: He lives in total chaos. When you come to our house you would never think I am the founder of Dusty Deco. We are always buying things, it’s always packed, there’s a crazy mix.

I am very talkative, I talk all the time. When I come home, I want to listen to my kids speak, to my wife. I really change personality when I come home. All this energy that you’re always giving – you also need to give that to the family. It’s a daily exercise of balancing. And that’s the beauty, too.