Meeting Karim Guest

London, October 8th 2023
The Red Room at The Connaught Hotel

When I met Karim Guest for the first time in 2004, I was applying for a job on his international sales team. At the time, he was managing several collections of a New York based Fashion company for the domestic and the international markets.

Guest, who was born in Germany and has a German Egyptian background, started to work in retail selling denim at the age of 15. He went to med school as it was the wish of his parents, but his passion for design and fashion led him to New York in the late 80s where he ended up studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

I know that about him, because he told me after he asked me about my background when we met in his office that day, I told him I work in the oil industry but always felt that I wanted to work in Fashion and a place that is driven by design and creativity.

When asking him why he hired me on the spot, he said: “Because I was looking for passion. And you were the first one in the process of interviewing people who was passionate about design. Everyone else just talked about their experiences – you talked about your willingness to give up a career in another industry, take a pay-cut to follow your heart. I related to this.”

Over the years, we kept in touch and ran into each other in Milan, London, Paris and New York – one time in Hong Kong. We ended up having lunch sometimes, sometimes a drink and the occasional dinner.

19 years after meeting for the first time, we sit down with a gin martini (“as dirty as the bottom of the sea” as Guest orders it) at one of his favored places in the world: The Red Room at The Connaught Hotel in London. “Did you know that all the artists on display in this room are women? I think that is the reason why this place has such an interesting vibe… Bourgeois, McKillen, Holzer… I feel very peaceful here – and I love the way they mix the drinks. Always perfect!” Guest should know as he launched his own Gin at one point in his career, called Karim Guest Camouflage Gin as the bottle was wrapped in a cashmere sleeve with a zipper designed in a camouflage pattern. “The only pattern I consider equal with a color as I always loved the Andy Warhol Camouflage pieces”.

Having worked in Fashion for many years, Guest started working on store designs when he moved from New York to Paris in 1998. “I had a client from Paris who always wanted me to come and work with him. One day, after a very unpleasant meeting in the London office of a company I worked at, I ran into him on Bond Street and he asked me for Lunch. That day, I accepted his offer and moved to Paris three weeks later.” The man in question was the late Alain Adjadj, a brilliant retailer who worked with Guest to bring Calvin Klein to Paris, to open the first Kiton Store in the world as well as more GianFranco Ferre stores in Paris, Monte Carlo and London… just to mention a few of the 30+ stores of the company. Alain Adjadj was one of the most important retailers in the luxury industry at the time and Guest still speaks with the highest respect of the man “who taught me everything – a true merchant who understood what customers want before they themselves did”.

“One day, Alain asked me to design a menswear store in a retail space in the 8th arrondissement. I designed the store like a bachelors Pied-à-Terre with cool vintage and antiques furniture from the Paris flea markets and antiques dealers. Lots of art and objects.” Although the store only lasted for a blink of an eye as a company saw the potential of the location and offered a substantial amount of key money for it – which Alain accepted – “that store led to my first interior design job in Paris for an American couple who bought an apartment in the Marais. They came into that store and asked to meet the designer”.

“From that job more projects followed always for American clients who bought a place in Paris, always by word-of-mouth recommendations. I started to work in both worlds – going from full-time employment in fashion to being a consultant and starting an interior and design business. That business grew and when I was asked by a client: “What about the art?” I remember hearing myself saying: “I already have a proposal for you which I will send you by the end of the week” So I started working in that world in the early 2000’s.”

“In 2004, I took a full-time job for an American Fashion Brand, and I moved to Milan as my base a city I knew from work but by moving there really got to know and got to appreciate. It was my last full-time job… not because I did not love it, but because I ended up spending 70% of my time dealing with politics and not with what my job was: manage global sales and at the same time support the designers and the creative departments to grow the brand. I realized that most of the people working with me in upper management were managing on the grounds of fear and intrigue. I managed on the grounds of respect and pushing talent. I ultimately left because I felt like being in the wrong place – and because many decisions of the management felt unreasonable and were pushed in the interest of egomaniacs and not the company”

I believe that creativity grows in places of harmony. Difficult to achieve as everyone and every company is so number driven. But in the end, all these numbers are based on one thing: the product, its quality, its craftsmanship and its design language. The sum of this connects it to the client. Fashion is personal and intimate – and it relates a message. Some designers love to dress-up their clients, others have them wear their version of a uniform – my approach is to have someone say, ‘he or she looked great’ instead of ‘he or she wore a great coat or jacket’. I also want the client to not think about clothing but rather live in my designs with ease and comfort; throughout their days, evenings, weeks, weekends” Guest states.

“I think almost all my clients are done with their wardrobe experiments -or experiments in general. They “found” my collection as they are always looking for something that suits their lifestyle. My clients travel in a certain way, they love craftsmanship and supple, high end luxury, they collect vintage watches, furniture and cars of high-quality design. All the clients I know personally, collect and appreciate art. And they love to eat at the best restaurants in town and usually stay at more traditional high-end hotels which offer impeccable service. They explore and learn constantly. Everything that they add to their lives has to have a relevance, a story, an experience that is worth remembering and the sum of that is creating a very personalized and unusual life with being at home in the world and seeing -or better yet, experiencing the world in a very sophisticated and respectful way. Therefore, a product needs to have a soul. My clients -out of experience- can tell if something is designed and handled with love, care and respect. I am looking for all of this in everything I design: quality, sustainability, non-toxic ingrediency, the right production, the right raw materials, proportions, how the designs feel when being touched, worn. I don’t “hide” my clients behind or in my designs – I reveal them in the best ways possible”.

“What this means is based on two experiences in my life: I became quite friendly with GianFranco Ferre during the time I worked in Paris. GianFranco taught me about the architectural aspects of a women’s body versus the body of a man. How to follow these lines and curves. I learned from him to train my eyes to look for these details in fashion designs and implemented this concept into my collections. I spend a lot of time in Japan during my 20s and learned the importance of proportion in any design, in any architecture… in a garden, in a piece of art and even in a dish that is served and displayed on a plate in a certain way– Japan changed my point of view. The way Japanese chefs prepare a meal is with love, pride, respect and total commitment to the enjoyment of their patrons. Experiencing all these different “creators” during my career, I found my way in this industry, my design language, my message and most importantly my passion for utmost luxury.”

Guest’s designs are based on an almost meditative reduction to the basics. He likes straight lines with no frills. He dresses his clients without dressing them up. Authenticity is ruling his approach to everything he designs as well as a comfortable way to express one’s personality, being oneself rather than someone else’s version. “I want my clients to look timeless.” When I asked him about his inspirations, he states that he does not look at his phone when driving into a city or when taking a walk in nature. “I look at colors of nature, of the sky, of buildings… I travel a lot and I am quite aware of the differences of light in different places which changes the hues of colors. I look at patterns, shapes… I look at people who inspire me and ask myself what it is about a man or a woman that attracts my eye. Sometimes I figure it out… sometimes I don’t and when I don’t I become more interested.”

“I work with fewer colors then others… Black and White, Navy and Blues, Greys, Browns and Beiges, Greige and sometimes I add Red or the occasional color that sticked to me after seeing a piece of art or a leaf, a sunset… I am more for quite, sophisticated colors rather than anything loud and overwhelming”

“I want people to remember the woman and the man they meet. I design collections that enhance the person who wears them… I want others to remember someone’s eyes, their smile, their voice… not their outfit.”

I left Guest that day and on my way home, I was thinking about his last statement. I tried to remember his outfit. What I did remember most was his voice and his intense eyes…. I guess his formular worked on me.

Sean Ashby