Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. We move in the boundaries between product and fashion design disciplines. HUNCH Office is a design and experimentation office set in Barcelona, working worldwide, combining the creation of fashion collections with product design, wearable technology and textile investigation and consultancy services. We are Industrial Designers by education. We met up at University and we started to work together until, during the final project of our degree, based in textile investigation, we invented a new material made by sheep wool fibers. Slowly but steadily we started to feel more comfortable in that crossover path between Industrial Design and Fashion and we decided that this could be a good choice in which we can learn everyday and develop different projects that will challenge us constantly.
Top 3 favorite or most visited websites and why? Youtube, Spotify play and Soundcloud. It’s all about the music.
How has living in Barcelona affected your work? Barcelona is where our team met up, where everything got started and also where our studio is based, so that means a lot. In a creative way I think that Barcelona does not affect us too much, we try to travel as much as we can to live different realities so we are not creatively focused in Barcelona.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Functionality, aesthetics, innovation, tradition, materials, architecture and people.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? Currently, we are in New York where we are developing a really special project for Unicef and UN. We have created the world’s first working time machine, that will be premiered the 14th of September at UN Building hall, hosted by Ban khi Mon. Our new fashion collection called “Team Member” will be premiered this September. We are already working on the new collection and on some new and interesting projects, but we will have to wait and see, exciting things are coming!
If you were a drink what drink would you be? I would say a random mix between orange juice and Mountain Dew.
What designers are you interested in right now? We really appreciate the work and philosophy of lots of designers, but most of all, we are really interested in the work of Spanish architects Enric Miralles and Josep Lluís Sert. If I think about a fashion designers, I have to say Miguel Adrover…come back please, worldwide creativity needs you!
Tell us about your work process and how it develops. Our design process varies depending on the project, if it’s our own collections or products, or if we’re working for a client or company. Regarding the collections, we always set a goal, either functional or material related, and we develop the pieces to achieve it. For example, in our first collection “Alpine Basics”, we wanted all the elements that formed the collection, that is clothing, objects and even the book that came along, to be waterproof. Once we had that challenge set, we investigated with materials and textiles until we found and produced what we wanted to get. In our last collection “People At Work”, the starting point was the functionality of workwear. To study it, we conducted an investigation that lasted for two months on every existing workwear piece to be able to understand them and re-interpret them.
When we work for other studios or companies, we’re limited by a briefing and not as free as we are in personal projects, but our process is kind of similar. As a rule, we don’t like to draw by computer nor to work with virtually generated volumes ‘till it’s necessary to do so. We like to work with our hands and prototype everything to sense the feeling that the project emanates directly.
Who would be your dream person to dress or style? Without any doubt, Camarón de la Isla.
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of your work? Seeing someone wearing one of your clothing pieces in the wrong way makes you ask yourself a lot of questions.