The British designer Tom Dixon rides his Moto Guzzi California motorcycle to the office each day, piloting it through the narrow, car-clogged streets of London. So it's with a hint of sheepishness that the 49-year-old describes how in April, during Milan's famed furniture fair, the Salone del Mobile, he rented a scooter, rounded the first corner, and ended up sprawled on the paving stones.
"No broken bones — just loads of scabs," he says of the aftermath, speaking over the phone from his studio. More impressive, though, is that Dixon headed right to his scheduled press appointments with the knees of his trousers torn and the arm of his leather jacket shredded, then later found a local garage where he straightened the bike's bent forks himself. "I was thinking of crashing every year now, just to get sympathy from the girls," he says, a wry laugh tumbling down the line.
The same bloody perseverance — if occasional disregard for self-preservation — is driving Dixon's latest endeavor: bringing his line of eponymous household furnishings to America. Sidestepping the usual business model, where a retailer cherry-picks a few pieces of a collection to carry, Dixon has introduced his full 60-product roster in spaces he curates within existing upscale design stores. "This way we can have increasing control of our brand's image," he says. Manhattan's ABC Carpet & Home is already on board, having opened a dedicated 1,000-square-foot shop; other U.S. outposts include Twentieth in Los Angeles and Limn in San Francisco and Seattle. "I mean, I am Martha Stewart," Dixon deadpans when I ask him where he got the idea. "Martha Stewart, watch out."
Born in Tunisia, Dixon moved with his family to England at age four; he attended art school for only six months, dropping out to join a post-punk band. After a motorcycle accident (yes, another — he's had 13 in all) left him temporarily unable to play his bass, he started experimenting with welding, transforming scrap iron into furniture. "That exchange, that alchemy of turning raw, rough metal into money was quite a motivating factor," he says. "I thought, This is a fantastic way to survive." By the end of the eighties, he was designing chairs for powerhouse Italian brands like Cappellini; by the mid-nineties, he had created his own company, Eurolounge, to make and sell his work. In 1998, Habitat, the chain started by Sir Terence Conran, hired him; he eventually became creative director.
Keeping control of his work was the impetus behind forming the Tom Dixon brand six years ago. He describes the items he's produced as "a bit of rough." As Dixon explains, "I've always favored things that are slightly less finished, more heavyweight and longer-lasting. It's an honesty of materials, a robustness that goes beyond fashion." Take his aluminum Link Table, with its repeating Alhambra-like pattern, or the Copper Shade Pendant, a polycarbonate globe coated with a thin film of buffed metal. But Dixon's work also displays a certain Britishness, as evinced by the forthcoming Plump Sofa, the first in a collection of traditional, horsehair-stuffed pieces made in conjunction with the English upholsterer George Smith. (All will be available in multiple shades of mohair velvet.)
