HOW TOKIDOKI CREATOR SIMONE LEGNO MADE KARL LAGERFELD RIDE A DRAGON
f course, if it’s a Japanese hip hop song I can’t do it,” he okes.
His number one fa orite thing to do in Japan “ at! I also like the countryside of Japan, but I really like the big metropolis in general a city like okyo, it’s full of design, full of inputs. here is the contrast of minimalist and classy and then the super crazy and eccentric isuals that they co e ist is a bit like my artwork,” he shares.
he ome born artist and creator of okidoki has been to Japan 32 times all in all, the first few times for fun, and now as the force behind his growing brand, which he co founded with Pooneh oha er and I an Arnold.
“ o will you sing it for us, imone ” Pooneh asks, going back to karaoke. And imone ust laughs. “Absolutely not, I cannot do it sober. And I’ll ruin my career!”
ow that’s something that won’t be easy to do. After all, it’s a career that he’s been nurturing since he was an elementary school kid, drawing with his brother and for his classmates. “I always thought I’d be doing something creati e,” he says. “ hen I was in kindergarten, all the teachers were putting my drawings on the walls. In elementary my teachers wanted me to decorate the classroom, and there was one time they asked me to draw the whole class as characters. I was si or se en. In high school, when we were studying the oman mpire, the teacher asked me to draw the dif ferent armors and stuff. I was the artist in the class. I was always sitting in the back sketching with all my books ust around I me.” f not an artist, imone wanted to work for an airline or in the airport. “ y father worked in one and so we were always tra eling, so I’ e always lo ed going to airports,” he says. o which Pooneh reacts, “ ow it doesn’t stop, you’re at the airport all the time!” o dreams do come true, I tell him. “ es, e erywhere in the world we ha e business relationships so you always ha e to show your face. It’s an e tremely hard life, but the reward is so special. ra eling gi es me not ust inspiration, but I also get to see so much appreciation and enthusiasm from fans.” And his fans surprise are mostly women who can get uite e treme, as in going through the torture of getting a tattoo kind of e treme. “ hey ha e my art permanently on their bod ies and they see it e ery day when they wake up It’s the highest form of flattery.”
I ask him if he’s anything like the characters he creates. “ ell, your art is the mirror of your soul,” he tells me. He started drawing andy the actus irl his fa orite character while acationing and ha ing nothing else to do. He saw a bunch of cacti, and drew them as children wearing cactus suits “to protect them from the big, scary world.” Putting two and two together, in a way, andy could’ e been him way back in 2 3, when I an Arnold stumbled upon okidoki. it while searching for new artists and designers to work with. “I was scared I had to share with someone I didn’t know e erything that I was doing,” says imone of the time I an and Pooneh first got in touch with him. Howe er, he was no stranger to the scene before that, he was already widely popular in the design scene. “It was a small community then. It’s like omic on 2 years ago, e eryone knew e eryone. here was a lot of en thusiasm in the community,” imone says. He flew out from Italy to LA in June of 2 3 and then mo ed there to build okidoki the brand in ctober.
ow okidoki is almost years old, with fans all o er the world, including fashion icons like arl Lagerfeld, who was recently immortalized, okidoki style along with his cat houpette , and countless collaborations in the works. “ b i ously, I’m most proud of the arl Lagerfeld col laboration, because it’s taking something that’s ery high fashion and bringing it into the crazy world of animation and e en ha ing him riding a dragon! At first I thought they wouldn’t like it, but they did! It was a really interesting social and design e periment. ut I also really cherish Le portsac because that is the biggest e er that we’ e done. As a can as it’s 3 degrees, you can put so many elements. And also the sneakers, nitsuka iger. I lo e sneakers. ometimes it can be ust ery limited edition and I still get e cited, like what I did for icycle playing cards. ery time it’s something new, I get e cited,” he says.
Tokidoki creator and founder Simone Legno talks
about his childhood, his art, working with Karl Lagerfeld and his second favorite
thing to do in Japan — karaoke.
Another new thing that okidoki is working on is slot machines. he brand was recently tapped by I for its casinos in acau and ingapore. hey’re also doing a full fashion line of shoes with London oul, an iconic fashion like that started in London another high price point item for okidoki. And for its anni ersary, the brand will again be working with past collaborators. As far as dream pro ects go, though, imone still has a couple he’s yet to realize. “eing a oman guy, I like endi. I also would like to do something for an airline! ut Pooneh and I always say that one day we will ha e our own amusement park here in Asia. It’s our goal. e’d make it more modern, for the whole family, but parents will ha e their own space. e can totally en ision it okidoki rides!” he shares.
“ i m i n g is e e r y t h i n g , ” says Pooneh. “ ou ha e all these win dows of opportunity and you ha e to make a mo e, otherwise the window starts to close. ut the thing that’s great about what we’re doing is that there are no dull moments. here’s no room to get bored. en though it’s e hausting, it’s e citing.” imone okes, “ ometimes it’s inhumane how much we work! ut the more you do, the more opportunities you get. ou start with small, small suc cesses and you get more alidated. ur life hasn’t been easy. here are times when I feel like packing my bags and mo ing back to Italy, but I don’t because we’re doing something new here, something different.”
Despite all the craziness, all the flying around the world, meeting clients and fans, imone keeps young and childlike through his art. “It’s what I do during the weekends. It’s what I do on airplanes. It’s what I do at dinnertime. o yeah, those are the times I can hand draw. omputer design, I do that while I’m doing business on the phone,” he says. Pooneh adds, “He’s got great energy. He’s definitely adorable his wife and kid would agree. I’ll be sitting in my office and I’ll hear him singing all the way from down the hall. It’s hysterical.”
“ o will you sing for us now ” I ask again. “ ou’re recording!” he says. o I hit “ top.”
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