Words Paul Tierney Photography Olivia Bee

Published in No 17

On a lucid spring day, the fashion designer Sander Lak stands secreted in his house avoiding the midday sun. Today, among other things, the 39-year-old is gamely juggling a life-examining interview with the construction of a swimming pool. In the background, secret projects simmer — commissions, collaborations, things to do and work out. Yet despite all this, the Brunei-born Dutch creative remains composed and organized, and in that tidy Netherlands way appears seemingly unfazed at unpicking his existence when more pressing matters loom.

 Up here in Dutchess County, NY, a swimming pool is an unnecessary luxury, so it’s best served with impact. What better way than using a repurposed steel shipping container, last seen gliding its way from Shanghai to Detroit? “It's a dream, but it's also a nightmare,” he says, eyes glinting at the prospect. “I already had a container pool. Then it started rusting from all sides and made the water brown. Needless to say, it’s now being relined, and completely re-tiled.”

Aware of Lak’s singular taste, I take it he hasn’t gone for the Hockney-standard Californian blue — that reflective aqua so beloved of the West Coast? “Obviously, I'm not doing a blue”, he says, almost defensively. “I did dark green before, something that gave it the look of a tropical island. This time, it’s sand-looking in colour, almost like a skin tone.”

I tell him about once visiting Linda Evangelista at her Spanish villa, high in the hills of Ibiza. “Casa Linda” had dense, dark blue pool tiles the colour of squid ink, something I thought obtuse at the time, but also terribly chic. “Sounds amazing,” he muses, genuinely interested.

It is apparent that color — type, mood or hue — will dominate this conversation. The received notion of Sander is that color is quintessentially his thing, and quite frankly that would be the absolute truth. As one of the most promising fashion designers to have emerged in the past decade, with stints at Dries van Noten and Balmain, through to his own label, the now defunct Sies Marjan, colour has always been at the core of his being. Is it in his DNA? Technically, no. But like an oily renaissance painting, it infiltrates his dreams.

A weighty tome, The Colors of Sies Marjan, (Rizzoli) has been published in the aftermath of his highly regarded label. It illustrates the period well, even though its time has passed. He has nothing to promote here save his own passion, and the subject at hand is, quite literally, evergreen. “The brand doesn't exist anymore,” he explains. “I didn’t need to link it to a collection or to a store opening, which made it a wonderfully free way for me to dive into explorations of color, through interviews, and with people in completely different fields. There is no commercial incentive to any of this stuff, it's purely creative.”

The book is a treat, but also something of a necessity. “I wanted to get it out of my system and close the chapter of Sies Marjan. To be honest, I’m the only designer I know who enjoys putting together a portfolio. This was simply an extension of that — something that tells the narrative of what my work is about.”

Pages flood by in a river of images, all chronicling the depth of his oeuvre. The “Cookie Monster Blue” (Lak is good at coining a shade) the “Cartland Pink.” The 1980s avocado Mercedes, flanked by a dress in the exact same shade; Dutch football fans united in orange. Side by side he blocks and pairs color like an expressionist painter, and there is art in the results. “I love the fact I have interviews in there too,” he says at his most proud. “Like the conversation with my friend, the artist Elizabeth Peyton. And the time I got to intellectualize about colour with architect Rem Koolhaas, with Marc Jacobs and Isabella Rossellini. Monet said, ‘Color is my daily obsession, joy and torment.’ I think I truly understand what he meant.”

To understand Sander, you need to consider his past. With a father working for a petroleum company, childhood was punctuated by four-year stints in a series of far-flung and strikingly disparate locations. Time spent in Malaysia, Gabon, and industrial Scotland informed his view of the world — from lush plantations to colossal steel oil rigs — and imprinted indelible colors. Every place holds tonal memories. “Gabon is a lush, tropical forest that’s completely overgrown, and everything is green. So, my mother would dress me and my siblings in contrasting colours, because when we went out to play we would be in the jungle, and if we were wearing neutral tones we would just disappear! In that part of my childhood there was no such thing as anything green or brown. It was all reds and oranges. She could just look out of the window and be like, ‘Oh, yes there they are. Up in the tree. Avoiding the snakes.’”

When Lak recalls moments such as these, something tangible clicks in his brain. He cannot mask the sheer delight of sensory memories, and it is these clear, formative experiences, his reaction to pigment and saturation, the continual shifting of place, which inform his so completely. “As a child I really thrived in a nomadic environment. I loved going somewhere and having a new house, a new room, and a new place to hide every four years. Everything would change so drastically — different temperatures, different animals, different nature. It’s made me who I am.”

Even Aberdeen, Scotland, which, after Africa, must have felt abrupt? “Possibly the greyest place on earth,” he smiles. “I don't know what it's like now but back then it was very industrial. There were lot of factories, lots of chimneys and smoke. But on the other hand, I also really remember the most incredible cliffs once you get out of the city — beautiful white cliffs with green grass.”

When his father passed away, so did his immersion into color. Returning to the almost puritanical pigment of the Netherlands felt like a betrayal of sorts, although wanderlust prevailed and beyond childhood he has continued to move towards a beautiful uncertainty. Work has afforded opportunities in Europe and the US, places where things are never quite the same. “I always let life guide itself,” he says easily. “I never think, I don't know if that opportunity is right. All of a sudden, I’ll end up working in Belgium, or I have to move to New York or Paris. That’s the joy of working in fashion, it opens up this whole world. For me, the idea of staying in one place is not a natural fit.”

He seems adaptable, chameleonic, able to both fit in and stand out. “But wherever I am in the world, I find it really important that there’s a space for me to work. And when I say work, I don't mean my computer, just a space that I feel is an inspiring place to be. I am a restless person, no doubt, but I also need a place to come home to and feel myself.”

“What do I like? Well, my partner and I have way too many books. We could open five bookstores and still not be able to get rid of them. At the beginning of my career, when I only had a few books, I would save up for months to buy them. Now I want to see them! All said and done, I just need a place for my art, my books, and my clothes.”

Of the former, he is amassing quite a collection, including works by Lucy Kim, Thomas Ruff, Marlene Dumas, Tina Barney and Hans Eijkelboom; the photography of Wolfgang Tillmans and Jack Pierson, and most notably the coveted lithographs of Neo Rauch. He never considers fashion when purchasing art, but color, the thing he relies on the most, naturally plays its part. “Art is a separate entity,” he says, “although there are always connections to be made.” Throughout his home, paintings are carefully placed and hung, and in often obtuse arrangements. “I never go for perfect,” his says of hanging etiquette, “it’s the space between that’s important.” Perhaps everything you need to know about Sander Lak is summed up in this sentence.

It’s striking that throughout all this talk his own house appears relatively drained of a substantial spectrum. “I’m very sensitive to color,” he says without irony. “I would go insane at home with too much around me. If you have a very heightened palate, you can’t eat everything you want because it’ll make you nauseous. I am fearless with it in my work and never feel afraid, but at home I need a release from its grip.”

That’s not to say the property doesn’t pop, it merely lets the things inside do the talking. It also benefits quite substantially from its outlook. “It’s wetlands around here,” he says of the surrounding geography, “quite natural and swamp-like in parts. Which I find really interesting because it gives it more of a rainforest jungle kind of feeling and a lot of my childhood was centered around the equator. Don’t misquote me, my village is not like Asia or Africa, in any shape or form, but it has a little bit of a hint of that kind of nature which happens when the ground is wet, and you get a kind of lushness. I appreciate those kinds of details.”

He’s not entirely sure why he is where he is. “I found this house. It’s five minutes from the station. It’s kind of a perfect location. We have one of those classic American main streets, you know? Like Pleasantville, with a little bookstore and a nice restaurant. It’s got a bakery, and a place where you can find knitting needles and yarns. It’s very cute.”

Cute enough to put down roots? That’s fearless stuff. “It’s complicated. I think for me, fearless would be to stay somewhere forever and ever. I’m a restless soul and will probably always remain that way. It’s the four-year itch, something I inherited from my father and had through childhood. But buying this house, well it's the first house that I've actually owned, you know? The first land I can actually call my own. I’ve gone past that way of living when you rent, when you have your career dictate where you are. This is not a rental, this is mine, and if something goes wrong, it's my problem. That makes me feel sane! I can still travel the world, and I can still return and have something real. I don’t know what my future will hold, it could be potentially anywhere, but there’s a space for me here, and it feels like home.”

The Colors of Sies Marjan is published by Rizzoli. Learn more about Lak’s collab with Maharam at maharam.com

Paul Tierney is an arts, culture and travel journalist, writing for W Magazine, The Guardian, El Pais and The Independent. @paultierneysees & paultierneywrites.com

Olivia Bee is an agrarian and artist @oliviabee and represented by imprimereltd.com