Enjoying Speed Metal Furniture
An interview with Jean-Michel Gadoua, the founder of Montreal's Éditions 8888.
First of all, thank you to all my new subscribers and readers. It means so much to have all of you OGs here with me.
Are you ready to Enjoy my first interview? I wanted to kick this off with Jean-Michel Gadoua, a Montreal-based designer whose line Éditions 8888 is like a lightning bolt in the design space, which is lallygagging in a tepid state of homogenization (there’s an article on The Verge about this published in 2016 specifically focused on Airbnb. What do you think, have we moved on yet?). With influences like Rick Owens, Skinny Puppy (see tattoos below) and 1970s West Berlin, 8888 is certainly not for those with wishy-washy tastes, and I find Jean-Michel’s dedication to exploring his creative vision in a commercial industry like design so inspiring.
I first got to know 8888 when I wrote about it for the Globe and Mail in 2021 and immediately became obsessed with and intrigued by the aesthetic. When I was in Montreal for Dr. Leah’s wedding last August, Jean-Michel and his fam had me over for a chat over banana bread and cappuccinos. They live on a pretty street in Pointe-Saint-Charles, an area they told me is changing a lot. I feel like so many people I talk to are struggling to retain their longtime love for a place amidst rapid city development. It’s really sad but perhaps change is inevitable and c’est la vie?
Here’s a very condensed and edited version of our chat, along with some of the photos I took.
Tell me about how metal influences your work.
“A lot of the references are in the names of the pieces. I have this chair draped in reflective spandex that I call the 8th Daughter of an 8th Daughter, which is a reference to Iron Maiden’s album Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. Things like that. All the descriptions of the furniture are almost like little poems with a lot of references to metal.”
How did you get into punk music when you were younger?
“Skateboarding. I started skateboarding, and then you’d watch skateboarding videos and there was always like punk music playing. Dead Kennedys. Black Flag. Crass.”
So when you were a kid, that was around the time when I was a kid and things were quite different. When you were skateboarding, was it very rebellious? Were you getting in trouble?
“Yeah, I grew up in the suburbs and they would always call the cops on us when we were skating in a public place because we were noisy or they thought we were going to start doing bad things or whatever. A lot of 8888 is built on the nostalgia that I have from this time. Wet Metal is totally inspired by early teens when I was skateboarding, listening to metal, listening to punk. Ghost Limbs is more when I was very, very goth. That’s why it’s a bit more dark, a bit more poetic, a bit more about death. I always revisit my past to get inspiration.”
What's something you've done that you felt was brave of yourself or was a risk?
“The whole thing. I constantly question myself. Sometimes I’ll be like, ‘Why am I doing this? It’s so stupid. It’s not going anywhere. It’s not making money. It’s just ridiculous.’ And other times I’m like, ‘It’s fun.’”
That’s why you're doing 8888? Because you’re enjoying it?
“Yeah! I want to have fun, I want to make cool stuff. I said to one of my friends, ‘You know what? I’m gonna be happy if, 30 years from now, kids on Instagram repost some of the photos of my shit. I’m going to be happy. I can die happy.’ I really don’t do this to make money.”
How do you balance doing something accessible with something more difficult?
“Sometimes, I'll be doing a piece and I’ll think about convenience and sometimes I just go all out and be like, ‘I don’t care if it’s not comfortable or convenient. It’s just something I want to make.’ Like the Phantom Hall Chair. I just love it but it’s not very comfortable. It’s just nice to look at. I called it a hall chair because I really like classic English furniture or French furniture. And the whole idea was just a chair that could flank a sideboard, or a console, something more decorative. When you sit in it, you feel like you’re in trouble.”
What’s one piece where you were like, “Why am I making this?”
“The Sarcophagus was kind of a funny thing. It’s like a daybed mixed with a bench mixed with a sarcophagus. It’s a bench but you can also go inside. I was inspired by air vents in buildings. It was kind of a dark piece because it’s very austere, but every kid that came in had a blast playing in it. That is so cool. You have this super dark thing that had super dark intentions, and yet people are having fun with it. Adults were saying, ‘I would totally buy that just to isolate myself for a few minutes.’”
Why did you want to make a piece where you can hide?
“When I start to have a theme and an idea, I start to play with it. Because this is from Ghost Limbs, it’s like a phantom limb. It’s the name of a condition like if you get amputated, you can still feel things. So that was the whole purpose of hiding, showing yourself, not being there, being there. It has to do a little bit with the pandemic too, that we were confined.”
Is there anything else that you're really excited about right now?
“Football is starting and I’m so excited. I watch every single game, almost. I don’t really post a lot about it on my stories. It’s not really in tune with my whole aesthetic and all that but I don’t mind. It’s part of who I am.”
Special thank you to Pat Lari for making this all come together et surtout a Jean-Michel pour avoir le confiance en moi et ce nouveau projet.
Before we say goodbye, here are three suggestions for you to Enjoy:
Cipôte
I asked Jean-Michel what kind of Québecois food he really likes and he put me onto cipôte, a tourtière-ish dish from Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean he describes as “a meat patty but made in a deep dish. There's like six kinds of meat, beef, pork, rabbit. There could be deer, pheasant, things like that. Very mixed. And there's potatoes. I really love that. My mother used to make it.” Mes amis—where can we get this in ROC???
Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s by Sarah Ditum
Air Mail published an excerpt on Jennifer Aniston from this book last weekend and I immediately put out a library hold. Penguin Random House calls Toxic “a scathing reexamination of the lives of nine female celebrities in the 2000s, and the sexist, exploitative culture that took them down.” Remember those days? Now I’m seeing calls for fans to reconsider how we support the celebs we admire. Hear hear!
Palm Sunday x Club Paris: Body Contact
Two Ossington faves, Palm Sunday salon and the Paris Paris bottle shop/tasting space Club Paris, are hosting a fragrance-focused wine tasting to celebrate the launch of Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday’s new perfume. Guests will be guided through a tasting of four wines, each of which highlights a different note in the Ash Wednesday scent. So chic.
Get your tix here.
TGIF et à bientôt! 🖤