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Plug and Engelberts met at a launch party wearing the same two-year-old pair of black and red-green iridescent Nike Air Tuned Max sneakers from 1999. The colorway, as described by Nike, was “Dark Charcoal/Celery-Saturn Red” and originally designed by Tinker Hatfield.
LERNERT engeLberts & SANDER plug
Studio Lernert & Sander
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As filmmakers, writers, graphic designers and visual artists for over a decade, the duo still struggle to explain it all to their parents.“We avoid it like we avoid politics,” they told Adobe’s 99U.
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In 2012, the duo blended over 1,400 perfumes launched that year, creating a one-of-a-kind aroma that was sold by Colette in Paris.
It’s an inevitable question for any creative partnership, and certainly one for the Dutch duo of Lernert Engelberts and Sander Plug: Do you argue? “No,” Plug says; “Yes,” interrupts Engelberts. But the response goes nearly unnoticed, and without missing a beat, they move on. After all, this is a professional relationship that has lasted over a decade, producing a wealth of influential work that speaks not of discord but to a precise and unified vision. The two not only look extremely similar, they also speak using “we” in almost all circumstances.
Known mostly for film work, the Lernert & Sander style is pop-art bright, witty as anything, and distinctly irreverent. They exist somewhere between commerce and art, finding unconditional acceptance in neither—seen by the advertising world as too arty, and by artists as “commercial whores.” Do they care? Not a chance.
Within the duo’s portfolio are a number of divisive projects. Their first project together, a film for Dutch KRO television in 2007, saw them sadistically melt chocolate Easter bunnies in three ways; children were brought to tears and parents complained. For ELLE magazine, they designed a style award that consisted of a “14-karat-gold version of the annoying plastic price tag, which plagues even the most luxury clothing,” as they explain it. The result? “The smallest award ever.”
If we make a mood board it only contains the things that we’ve made, never things that other people made.
“I think we are deliberately trying to position ourselves in that gray area,” Plug says, describing their place between commercial and art worlds. “That area is becoming bigger and bigger.” The Dutch are, as a nation, skilled at dry mockery that doesn’t feel punkish or petty but somehow progressive. Think of the genre-redefining BUTT magazine, which Engelberts and Plug both contributed to, produced by eventual Fantastic Man founders Jop van Bennekom and Gert Jonkers; or of the creative agency KesselsKramer, which famously branded a client’s hotel as “The Worst Hotel in the World.”
Lernert & Sander easily fit into this tradition, whether they’re creating an art project where the duo are photographed in clothing they found in gay club darkrooms, or a handbag for Kiki Niesten in Amsterdam called Bag Bag, meant to evoke “those little bags that inevitably appear below the eyes of every fashionista.”
Any overt referencing is limited. In fact, it’s very limited: They use just themselves. Outside inspiration? “Never!” Plug says. “If we make a mood board, it only contains the things that we’ve made, never things that other people made.” They say they are not ones to spend hours riffling through monographs, or submerging themselves in archives. When they get a brief, they print it out, sit down, read it and think. If nothing comes to mind immediately, they’ll take a walk and talk it over.
We trust our work is not about style but about communication—that whole style is just a way for the idea to flourish.
Where many creative agencies often use a collage of outside work during the pitch process to a client, Engelberts and Plug refuse. “We try to avoid showing clients endless pages of what other people have done,” Plug explains, “because then you are locked in. We’d rather lock them into something that we’ve hand-sketched of how we’d like to do it, because you know that meeting will be so important for the rest of the project, so you’d better visualize it yourself.”
Many in the industry have followed them, sometimes a little too closely. “We’ve done a whole lecture about copycats,” Engelberts says. “But we trust our work is not about style but about communication—that style is just a way for the idea to flourish. We are not afraid everyone who copies us will have the same wit or communication power. It’s more than finding the right colors to paint a set.” He goes on, “We’re always aware of the problem, and we always try to solve [the client’s] problem . . . we don’t just try and make something quirky.”
That doesn’t mean they’re not fans, too—they admire John Waters, RuPaul and Miranda July, to name a few. However, they’re less interested in the final product than the thought process or personality behind it. For their own work, Engelberts and Plug say it’s the client who drives the process. “A great client is a great inspiration,” says Engelberts, “and sometimes your biggest headache.”
The pair met at a launch party for Jop van Bennekom’s Re- magazine, both wearing the same peculiar style of Nike sneakers. Upon discovering they shared a sense of humor, Engelberts—then a writer and filmmaker with Dutch national television—asked Plug to join a team working on a drama series, as art director. Plug had worked in industrial design, then in graphic design, then as an art director for an agency, and finally as a post-graduate student in art, which “gave me permission to also call myself a visual artist,” he says. The two quickly decided to venture off on their own, with “Chocolate Bunny”—and the rest, as they say, is history.
They say that some artists stick their nose up at the pair having a web shop, where advertising is often confused by high concept. Despite their adventurous and often avant-garde work, they think that “new stuff is really vulgar.” “There are enough old chairs, old shoes,” they say. “We can sit on those, wear those for the rest of our lives.”*
The duo contributed to BUTT magazine, and Engelberts also modeled for the publication. When the magazine planned a photo shoot mocking David Beckham’s suggestive Arena Homme+ appearance and the model canceled, Engelberts stepped in.
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Engelberts says that if there were a radio show about him, they’d called it the “Sour Hour.” Plug, he says, is more of a natural optimist.
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In her 2017–2018 program for the Paris Opera Ballet, Dupont included Balanchine’s Jewels and Rudolf Nureyev’s Don Quixote alongside more modern classics like Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring.
AURÉLIE DUPONT
Paris Opera Ballet
What would you do if you knew your career had to end? Aurélie Dupont retired from the Paris Opera Ballet, where she spent her entire career, at 42 years old, in compliance with the institution’s imposed cutoff for dancers. Her farewell performance was Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, in May 2015.
“We know it, right from the beginning,” Dupont admits when discussing retirement age. “We are supposed to be ready. Except that time passes by so fast.” She’s seated in her office, which features a large round window looking north over Paris. “At 17, you think that 42-year-olds are old. At 27, you say to yourself, ‘There is still time.’ At 35, ‘Oh, 40 is next.’ At 37,” the ballerina says, “I began to think seriously about my next steps.”
Dupont says she’s in no pain that might prevent her from continuing to dance. “I told myself that 42 is not old,” she explains. “It’s just that my face is more marked by time.” (She’s exaggerating, of course. The icon was featured in an ad campaign for French handbag designer Jérôme Dreyfuss at 43, and remains “as stylized and sharply edged as an art-deco statue,” according to The New Yorker.) Ultimately, Dupont remained Zen about the early retirement rule, and celebrated the fact that it sparks generational turnover. “It opens up another contract,” she notes. “Otherwise, I’d deprive a young person from starting their career.” She smiles, wryly. “And there are dancers we a
re very happy to see go, to know that they will not continue.”
Dupont, however, is not one of them. She’s a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and a member of the Ordre National du Mérite. The French edition of Vanity Fair christened her number three on its 2016 “Most Influential French Person in the World” list (alongside pâtissier Pierre Hermé and the singer from Christine & the Queens; Emmanuel Macron, before becoming president, was listed at number six). The dancer has also been the subject of films, including documentaries by Frederick Wiseman (La Danse) and Cédric Klapisch (L’espace d’un instant).
Yet up until this point, her life has been contained within the opulent 350-year-old Parisian building designed by Charles Garnier —both in its studio and under its spotlights. In 1983, at age 10, Dupont entered the Paris Opera Ballet School. She joined the company in 1989, became a première danseuse in 1996 and was promoted to star dancer—une étoile—in 1998, after her performance as Kitri in Rudolf Nureyev’s production of Don Quixote. All told, Dupont has called the Paris Opera home for over three decades, cementing an exceptional legacy.
She was raised with an appreciation of music and painting—though her parents were not in creative fields. Dupont says she rarely spoke, and felt deeply uncomfortable around others, until she discovered dance at age nine. “Dancing was my way of expressing myself. I really needed it to feel comfortable,” she emphasizes in a hushed tone. The strength of her interior monologue powered her motivation and discipline: “If I do not work on myself, on my instrument de travail, which is my body, nothing will happen,” she explains. Furthermore, the creative gambles of the milieu thrilled her. “I really wanted to put myself at risk. When one is creative, one necessarily puts oneself in danger,” she says, citing artists—now pillars of the form—who took this approach. “I’m thinking of Stravinsky, or Pina Bausch. During their time, they were considered too creative, too visionary, but today they are classics. Creativity is necessary to grow, to discover oneself as an artist, to keep the imagination alive.”
In 2016, Dupont was appointed the director of dance for the Paris Opera Ballet, an altogether different kind of risk. Behind her desk, at her back, is a bulletin board of meaningful totems: a note from theater director Bob Wilson, an image of a Bernard Buffet painting, messages from children (her own two sons, and admiring young strangers), a picture of Pina Bausch. Was she conflicted about accepting the position? “One can say always ‘yes’ and afterward ‘I don’t like this’—but one cannot say ‘no.’ It would be a mistake,” she shrugs. “Risks have to be taken all the time, in art. Otherwise, it’s boring.”
Creativity is about prompting a disruption, in yourself, and in turn for those on the receiving end of your performance.
Sir Kenneth MacMillan
The British ballet dancer and choreographer served as the artistic director of the Royal Ballet in London between 1970 and 1977. He was knighted in 1983 and received many honorary degrees over a long career, despite suffering stage fright as a dancer and a tumultuous run as artistic director while in Berlin. In 2015, Aurélie Dupont performed in MacMillan’s Manon as her farewell performance at Paris’ Palais Garnier. MacMillan based the three-act ballet on an 18th-century French novel by Abbé Prévost.
Her first requirement, she asserted, was “to be visionary—where am I going to take the company in a year, two years, three years?” Another key imperative: “to keep the classical ballet heritage and, at the same time, maintain an openness to contemporary dance.” Further, she expected herself “to be demanding, to listen to and empathize with people, to respect the new generation—to not just do what I did at their age, because lives are different and the expectations are, too.”
Dupont is one of the few women directing a ballet company (although the Paris Opera was previously helmed by Brigitte Lefèvre for almost 20 years). Dupont directly succeeded acclaimed choreographer Benjamin Millepied, whose tenure lasted under two years—allegedly due to the rigidity of the institution. He is, in fact, her dear friend. She danced in his Amoveo in 2006, Daphnis et Chloé in 2014 and Together Alone in 2015. “He provided codes, but he had enough confidence in me, in my desire to inhabit his steps, to trust my vision,” she says. “After he’d impart the necessary information, he’d say to me, ‘You do what you want.’ It’s a very enjoyable type of liberty.” Other choreographers often offer narrower, more mastered leeway. “Creativity is an image in their head, and they use your body like clay, to make it move the way they want,” she remarks. “It’s like a text that you have to learn by heart.”
Since retiring, Dupont has been able to approach dance with a more fluid slant. (“What I discovered after I retired was freedom,” she told The New Yorker.) She collaborated with the Martha Graham company, reviving techniques she hadn’t practiced since adolescence, and performed Sleeping Water, a 70-minute work by Japanese choreographer Saburô Teshigawara, with members of his company, as a guest artist. “Saburô encourages you to go beyond yourself,” she says.† “He allowed me to discover improvisation. One must be emptied of everything, and not have the brain controlling the body.” In turn, Teshigawara said of her: “She is a great dancer and very intelligent. Intellectual, but also physically intelligent.” Dupont wrestles with this fundamental binary. “There is creativity that is analytically reflected upon, that is worked on, and then there is creativity that’s close to that of a child, which is very spontaneous.” Ultimately, she reaches for both.
In 2016, Martha Graham Dance Company marked its 90th anniversary with a special gala program. Dupont performed excerpts of two Graham works, Lament and Appalachian Spring. Earlier in life, while training at the Paris Opera Ballet School, she briefly studied the Graham technique.
Beyond her director position, she also took on an acting role (playing a French choreographer) in a narrative film by Swedish choreographer, dancer and director Pontus Lidberg. “I’m not Charlize Theron, but I wanted to see what it was,” she says, “to accentuate the palette of your personality for a role.” She has stretched in this manner before, when she had trouble relating to the titular comatose princess in an adaptation of Sleeping Beauty. “There are roles for you, and there are roles that are not for you at all, but you still have to dance and act,” she says. “You have to find that.” She enjoyed being given directions from behind the camera, to provoke various takes on the same lines. “You’re constantly renewing yourself and seeking new things,” she explains. “In dance, there is no cheating—it’s very direct.” Eventually Dupont says she wants to develop a documentary about dance in its many forms, and is eager to pursue a wholly personal project. She’s already crafted the storyline, but put the project on hold for her day job. “When we create, we wonder how the other will perceive the creation,” she admits. Dupont is always acutely aware of others’ gazes due to the performative nature of her métier. “Creativity is about prompting a disruption, in yourself, and in turn for those on the receiving end of your performance,” she says. Despite the intense pressure this requires, it also provides a transcendent boldness. As Dupont says, “With dance, once it’s done, you can’t go back.” *
With dance, once it’s done, you can’t go back.
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Constant communication is imperative for Tourso and Beyoncé. The musician sends him anything that inspires her, from YouTube videos to photographs.
TODD TOURSO
Beyoncé
Flaunt
Lady Gaga
Asked about his wildly diverse career, Todd Tourso—creative director for Beyoncé Knowles—reaches for the psychological, philosophical, even spiritual. “To me, being a good creative director is trying to help an artist or brand speak to a greater truth,” he says. “Acting without ego. Trying to nod to the human condition in a way that is authentic to their story or legacy.” This is not, perhaps, what you’d expect from someone whose primary mission is to help the world’s most celebrated pop star orchestrate music
videos, album rollouts and photo campaigns. And yet hearing him tackle the really big questions, you come to understand that these ambitious metaphysical appetites are probably why he’s the right choice for the job. “I’m obsessed with things bigger than human existence,” he says, noting, in part, his boss’ global appeal. “I’m trying to find some kind of calm and powerful truth that resounds with everybody.”
Tourso has explored those sublime realms as Beyoncé’s creative director during two of the most resonant and ambitious moments in her career: her 2013 self-titled, surprise- released visual album about love, intimacy and sensuality; and Lemonade, her 2016 record-cum-film project that tackled civil rights, marital strife and romantic redemption. Each was kept shrouded in absolute secrecy until its release. His role seems to come down to this: Beyoncé has some appropriately Beyoncé-sized idea about a project, and Tourso helps her make it happen, no matter how improbable, scouting for the locations, directors, editors, camera angles, anything that will make her dream a well-executed reality.† He is, suffice to say, good under pressure.
Pharrell Can’t Skate
While studying at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, a private institution founded in 1930, Tourso started a small streetwear brand called Plain Gravy. The company’s infamous PHARRELL CAN’T SKATE T-shirt sold out at the iconic Paris shop Colette and eventually caught the attention of Pharrell himself. It was the musician who ultimately arranged Tourso’s meeting with Beyoncé in 2013.
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