At home with the Misses
DELIGHTING IN DESIGN: ITEMS FOR HOMES THAT ARE THE EPITOME OF FUNCTIONAL ART
Adriaan Hugo and Katy Taplin are celebrating their brand’s first decade.
It’s been a decade since the first Dokter and Misses’ range illuminated the way towards a design style that has been able to linger in the country. With a mix of ultra-modern, splashes of retro, pops of colour and natural materials, a Dokter and Misses piece is unmistakable. But don’t think the strong design was ever by accident. Adriaan Hugo and Katy Taplin always wanted to create beautiful things and their eventual foray into what was to become Dokter and Misses was always organic.
“Growing up on a plot in De Wildt without television led me to always make things with my hands to stay entertained. Visits to the scrap yard in Brits, building foefie slides, making pottery in my mother’s studio, painting candles for extra money. Being exposed to this world of materials and physical things helped me understand things and not be intimidated by objects.
“Later I went to art school and took sculpture as a main subject. This is when I knew what I wanted to do. After studying Industrial Design at UJ I went to work for South Africa’s best designer, Gregor Jenkin. His generosity allowed me to follow my own path and start DAM,” says Hugo.
Taplin cultivated a love of design while pouring over magazines like The Face, Vogue and Rolling Stone which induced her to study Information Design at the University of Pretoria. She then worked at the now-defunct Student Life and spent a year in New York working in branding.
“I realised then that I couldn’t get excited about someone else’s brand, and as I began planning to come home Adriaan and I (who studied together) started talking about starting something of our own.
“It’s taken me many years to confidently call myself a product designer but I’ve learned from the best and my background in graphics and branding has added another facet to the business,” she says.
According to Hugo, they started with a strong idea of what to create and their first range featuring primary colours and bold modernist design immediately established Dokter and Misses in a unique realm – they were doing things which were familiarly unfamiliar.
“We received really positive feedback from the public and the press, reassuring us that we are doing something that has a place in the world. We realised that if