Mixte Magazine

If you’ve had the chance to wander around a tourist-less Paris (thank you Miss Rona) over the past months, you may have unknowingly spotted the work of Carlijn Jacobs and Imruh Asha in a few places. Whether it was last spring on the storefront of the new Carven boutique for which Carlijn did the SS21 campaign, or this summer on the billboards of the Hôtel de Ville on rue de Rivoli, which featured photos of clothing sculptures created by Imruh for the Future Shock exhibition in partnership with the Ere Foundation, their work has been displayed all over the French capital. On the face of it, the fact that this young couple – they both turned 30 this year, shout out! – has been making a splash on the walls of the fashion capital comes to no surprise, especially considering that not even a global pandemic was able to stop the ambition and creative genius of this Dutch duo known to be one of the nicest, funniest, most curious, bon-vivant, warm-hearted and caring people within the fashion industry today – which is rare enough to be mentioned.

In the space of a year, Carlijn, who recently got signed by the top art agency Art & Commerce, has created campaigns for brands such as Mugler as well as cover stories for Pop and Vogue Paris, while Imruh, who has signed with the Streeters agency, has collaborated with renowned magazines and brands such as M le Monde, Vogue (Paris, US, Italia), Louis Vuitton or Moncler before being recenlty named as fashion editor at Dazed & Confused. It’s fair to say that since these two met in 2014 at a club in Amsterdam where Carlijn had come to take photos of a party for i-D Netherlands, they have each been on their respective grind and carved out highly successful personal careers. But it wasn’t until they started working together that they realised they could make sparks fly. “We soon realised that we shared the same vision and the same desires, Carlijn says. We feed off each other and support each other constantly. In all the projects we undertake together, we always give it our all.” Imruh adds: “We clearly speak the same verbal and visual language. Coming from the same country and being of the same generation, we have the same references. This artistic complicity gives us incredible energy. And we always try to get new and different things out of it by exchanging ideas, challenging each other but also giving each other space when needed. And when we feel that certain things aren’t working, we’re able to talk about it openly”.

This trust and unfailing support, together with a healthy and straightforward approach to communication, seems to be the major asset that helped them to “overcome the difficulties, the disappointments, the exhaustion, the irritation and sometimes the lack of inspiration”. And above all, it’s given them the opportunity to produce intense images with a singular aesthetic. The photos they have shot together recently are a testament to this, such as the cover of the spring 2021 issue of Dazed & Confused (the work they are “most proud of” to this day), where we can see a young bride with a retro-futuristic look running towards the “world after” in a couture dress and white sneakers, or the latest spring-summer 2022 campaign for Jacquemus, in which dogs clearly steal the show from models whose faces are deliberately hidden. Genius. It seems ages since their first collaboration when they created lookbooks for the SPRMRKT (supermarket) concept store, a sort of local Colette located on Amsterdam’s Rozengracht street, where Imruh used to work. Today, the place has closed its doors, but it undoubtedly allowed Carlijn and Imruh to open many others, like the time when, during a trip to Paris in 2015, they were delighted to discover Pierre Cardin’s universe when walking by his flagsghip store on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. “When we saw the storefront and the clothes, we were blown away, Carlijn remembers. It really felt like we had found the missing piece to complete our creative puzzle, whether in terms of fashion, design, furniture, colours, shapes…” “Definitely, Imruh agrees. With his very abstract, graphic, geometric and futuristic influences, Pierre Cardin is probably the reference that corresponds best to both of us. He is even the one who encouraged us to move to Paris.”

Indeed, much like Cardin, Carlijn and Imruh’s aesthetic is marked by vibrant colours, powerful looking models, with a hint of surrealism and a touch of weirdness, often with an unexpected and surprising element or accessory in the composition. Perhaps one of the best examples of this creative process is the images Carlijn and Imruh produced during the first major global lockdown of the Covid-19 era in spring 2020. The challenge they set themselves at the time was to manage to create at least one image a day at home with the means at hand while the whole world was on pause and they could barely set foot outside. The result? Unusual pictures like the one of a naked model wearing a pair of dark glasses with two purple garbage bags filled with air acting as clothes, mask and headgear. “I think our ultimate goal is to produce powerful and impactful photos that will make the viewer go ‘wow’”, Carlijn says. “We want people to be surprised by what they see, Imruh completes. But once this state of surprise has subsided, we want the image to become obvious and a reference for everyone.” They can rest assured, the pictures they have created so far have already made their way into the pantheon of pop culture and fashion iconography.