Shelf Sessions: Guillaume Philibert

Daniel Arsham art sculptures, KITH skateboard decks on the wall, the most exclusive Nike releases of the year and stacks of books with titles like A Bathing Ape (signed by NIGO), Supreme and This is Not A F*cking Street Style Book. The decorative elements in the home of Filling Pieces’ founder and Creative Director Guillaume Philibert tell you exactly what he’s all about. His street culture infused home is a reflection of himself, both personally and professionally.

Guillaume visited MENDO for the first time about eleven years ago, when MENDO collaborated with concrete architectural associates on the iconic interior it still has today. During that time, a young Guillaume was doing an internship at concrete, and was immediately triggered by the books and the ambiance of MENDO.

After one of Guillaume’s closest friends (now co-owner Gunifort) started working at MENDO, the Berenstraat became one of the regular hang-out spots for him and his friends. A group of friends with an entrepreneurial spirit, people that have become owners of some of the biggest names in Dutch streetwear.

“When Guny started working at MENDO, we were there almost every weekend. It was part of our weekly routine. As an architecture student, the books and the store itself were very inspirational, of course. I have always been interested in fashion and the books of MENDO have been a large part of that.”

Check some of the favorites from Guillaume’s shelves.

During that period, Guillaume started his company Filling Pieces. A footwear brand that fills the gap between streetwear and high-fashion. An unlikely decision perhaps for someone who’s studying architecture, but instead of pursuing a career in architecture, Guillaume deliberately chose for fashion. “Good design is problem solving. And at that time, the problem for me was the gap between streetwear and high-fashion. The process of architecture simply became too slow for me. The magnitude of an architectural project was too big for a young kid like myself. On product level, I was able to solve a problem quicker, while still using the same design stages and ethos as I did with architecture.”

And when you think of it, fashion and architecture are not that far apart. Good examples are Yves Saint Laurent and of course Louis Vuitton. It is not a coincidence that one of the books that have been essential in Guillaume’s career was Louis Vuitton: Art, Fashion, and Architecture. “I have the old version, with the Takashi Murakami cover. This book, and actually Louis Vuitton in general, has been a game changer for me. With LV you see that they have a very strong visual language which translates into all their projects. That mix of product, architecture and content has been an important part of my inspiration.”

Something that also might have helped is the fact that Guillaume and his friends (which include the owners of Daily Paper, The New Originals and Olaf Hussein), are at the centre of Amsterdam street culture right now. “I’ve never really been fully aware of the fact that people see Filling Pieces as a part of this new wave, but I like it. We’re all kids with migration backgrounds that often had to work twice as hard to reach an equal level. I’m glad that we can help each other in that and empower and motivate each other to reach to higher grounds.”

MENDO, as a store, was at the very heart of that group and actually has (in)directly lead to inspire some of Filling Pieces’ collections. Its Fall/Winter 2017 collection named Move Without Barriers started when Guillaume was introduced to Jimmy Nelson’s Before They Pass Away. “Besides its beautiful photos, I was intrigued by the Tsaatan tribe from Mongolia. They are reindeer herders and nomads that travel several times a year to constantly find a better place to live. I saw resemblance to the story of my Surinamese parents, and so many people around me whose parents came to the Netherlands, to find a better life. That was the starting point for that collection.”

Next to thematic inspirations, Guillaume uses a lot of his fashion books as references for colors, prints, fits and models. “It’s a sort of creative tissue that eventually flourishes into a full collection, and MENDO is definitely a part of that for me.”

A great example is Filling Pieces’ shift towards clothing, with their first collection debuting at Barneys New York last year. “The first time I went to New York, I was a young kid interested in architecture and fashion. That all started with the Guggenheim Museum and Barneys. I remember seeing the Guggenheim for the first time and being amazed by it, after which I walked down Madison Avenue to Barneys. I was a big Pharrell Williams fan, so I wanted to buy a BBC-sweater at Barneys. Both the Guggenheim and Barneys really changed my perspective on architecture and fashion. To me, Barneys is the epitome of fashion luxury.”

Years later, Barneys reached out to Filling Pieces to create a ready-to-wear collection together. “That first collection with Barneys brought everything full circle. Two items in that collection have a direct reference to that walk: a t-shirt with a portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright (Guggenheim’s architect) and one with an old Barneys ad – which I had found in the Barneys book at MENDO.”

Guillaume was one of the 25 creatives that were part of our 2017 book The Workshop, but one of his greatest wishes is to make a book with MENDO about Filling Pieces. “That is something that I’ve been saying for a long time and it is still very high on my to do list. I have some ideas about it, so maybe we should get together and seriously talk about it.”

It would certainly be a nice addition to his already extensive collection of books. Books ranging from Wonderwall Case Studies, Streets of London and Living Under The Sun to Slim Aarons: Women and High Tide, which was an inspiration for Filling Pieces’ latest outdoor collection. “We try to seek the boundaries of what we can do with our products and I hope that, if we make this book with MENDO, we can show the entire process of creating a collection. I hope that someday it might inspire others like these books have inspired me.”

Check some of the favorites from Guillaume’s shelves.

Check some of the favorites from Guillaume’s shelves.