Originally published May 2019. Republished here as part of bringing The VL Studios archive onto this site.
On 31 May 2019 we opened The VL Studios in New York, and filled the room with people from technology, fashion and theatre who mostly did not know each other.
There was live music — Johanna Telander and her jazz band, Charlie Rauh and me, Diina Tamm with James Koroni, Brandon James Gwinn and Wassim Askoul. Doug Thompson premiered a video for Watcher in The Woods: A New Musical. Eleri Ever photographed the evening.
The idea behind the studio was straightforward and has not really changed: put design, technology and marketing people in one room rather than three, because the gap between them is where most brand work goes wrong.
Seven years later the work has moved on — an AI practice, a publication, four records — but that evening is still the thing I would point at if someone asked when it started.
