Meet...

One of my favourite staple pieces of this blog is the monthly profile on "real people".  I have the honour of momentarily crawling into the world of brilliant, creative and generally fabulous people and it's always a highlight for me.  This month's profile of Adrian Elton is no exception.  His thoughtful and eloquent responses to the questions posed, leave me wanting to get to know this guy more and to be part of his world (can you increase your creative talent by osmosis?).   We were lucky enough to catch Adrian for this interview during a photography shoot with the talented photographer Dean Schmideg - check it out. 

Adrian Elton

Photo by Dean Schmideg

What do you do?

I like to think of myself as a bit of a creative troubadour, shape shifting as the creative impulse takes me. While most of my time is spent as a graphic designer, art director and copy writer – I also love writing and recording original music - as well as dabbling in the dark art that is movie making. To that end I'm currently art directing a feature documentary called, 'Shalom Bollywood', so look out for it in the film festival circuit when it's released hopefully later this year.

Photo by Dean Schmideg

Favourite Fashion/Style Piece:

From the second I first saw Adam Ant, back in the early 1980s, resplendent in his vintage naval regalia and howling from the TV set, I was transfixed by his vast array of techni-colour war coats. This obsession with 'coats of consequence' was further flamed as Michael Jackson strutted the light fantastic with his many zippered 'Beat-It' jacket and then later again with his thorax thrilling, red leather 'Thriller' jacket. Consequently, one of my own favourite jackets is a vintage men's Bavarian Trachten Wool Jacket with horn buttons that I picked up at a flea market in Florence when I was 23. The jacket I'm wearing in the photos (taken by the super talented Dean Schmideg) is also a vintage number that I picked up in Brick Lane in London in 2008.

Photo by Dean Schmideg

3 Things You Can't Live Without:

Thing Number One: My 1966 Hofner violin bass (which features throughout the shoot I did with Dean). It's the same model bass guitar that Paul McCartney played most famously in The Beatles and I sourced it from the New Kings Road Vintage Guitar store in London early last year. To hear it is to fall in love. It sounds like warm honey. I also got to live out one of my most fantastical Beatle fantasies in March this year when I got to master one of my tracks at Abbey Road studios with their senior mastering engineer, Steve Rooke, who mastered The Beatle Anthologies. A surreal and sonically sublime experience.

Photo by Dean Schmideg

Thing Number Two: My MacBookPro. It's generic. It's replaceable. But it's the mother station where thumbnail sketches and foundling thoughts are transmogrified into fully fledged campaigns and artistic statements.

Thing Number Three: My stuffed toy rabbit that I've had since I was a toddler. It is imaginatively called, "Rabbit", and wears a royal blue and white houndstooth skivvy, together with some fabulous khaki coloured corduroy pants. It is very old school and sits with "Monkey" (a stuffed toy monkey) on a bed side table in the spare room.

Photo by Dean Schmideg

Favourite Urban Space: I'm really loving the redesigned vibe of the Malvern Rd café, Hobba. In particular, I love sitting at the back of the space, working away on the lap top, while eating their translucent, slow poached eggs with hazelnut crumbs and asparagus.  Just the industrial volume of the space, the hanging plants, and the stripped back furnishings make for a delicious pitstop. I also really love Southern Cross station. I hardly ever go there as my studio is in Prahran, but when I do I feel like I've arrived at the holo-deck of a space age Paddington Station or any of the other grand European train stations. I love the undulating canopy and the sheer heft of the cavernous space.

Photo by Dean Schmideg

Current Obsession: My lifelong obsession with collecting musical instruments aside; one of my current obsessions is belts. Pretty, pretty belts. To that end I just got a belt made by the fabulous designers at 'Tread & Pedals' which is made from the recycled outer-tube of a bicycle wheel. It's dirty white and the treads, to my mind at least, evoke classic snake skin belts. Very urban street-chic :P