Stephen Kenn

I just turned 40. I’m originally from Canada but have been living in LA for the last 20 years. When I was 20, my good friend (also named Steve) and I started making jeans in Canada and, after a trade show in Las Vegas, we took a road trip down to LA to visit some factories and decided to stay. I designed jeans for six years, then bags for two years, and furniture for the last 12.

I’ve been exploring legacy and heirloom objects since the first pair of jeans I fell in love with. I tend to start by deconstructing something to learn how it was made – and then I become obsessed with learning about materials and functionality. I want to understand why some objects feel special and others feel disposable. I hope that people lean into this exploration with me and that we journey together towards investing in objects that help tell a legacy story.

I’m a very curious person. I spend a lot of time examining how things are made and questioning why they were made in the first place. Thinking this way makes the world endlessly fascinating. I often get into a new medium because I meet someone who fabricates in that medium, and so I design something specifically to work with that person. They’re most often not designers themselves, but rather experts in working with a specific material.

Working with these makers is my favorite part of design. I love the excuse to see into their world and understand the history and process behind their craft. I see so much simplicity and satisfaction in someone who makes something with excellence for a living. I’m interested in telling their story and showing my appreciation for them by sharing their story and work with my customers so they can also feel connected to the object they have invested in.

I start everything with curiosity but that quickly moves to sketching on my iPad with an app called Shapr3D. I spend a lot of time exploring new materials and processes because that inspires me to design something that can use those materials or processes. I get insights into how to solve design problems by observing everything around me in as many environments as possible.

I love when something reveals itself in the most unlikely of places. An example of this would be the belts we use in our Inheritance Collection. I had designed the frame of our sofa, but it wasn’t until opening an old duffle bag at a military surplus warehouse and finding a couple dozen tangled belts that I immediately thought, “This would be incredible on the sofa frame to hold the cushions in place.” It’s trying to be present to the environment I’m in and remembering there are hundreds of ways to solve the same problem and a new one will present itself every day if you are listening.

I am designing every day. I always have a problem I’m wrestling with. Over the last year, I’ve been thinking about a small shelter concept for a cabin in the woods that my wife and I want to build. Before we build the cabin, we’re going to experiment with a temporary campsite. I’ve been gathering materials and companies to source from and making sketches. Along the way, I buy things that I think will help with the project.

It is not one clear vision from A-Z on a computer. It’s a journey that evolves over time and gets better on some days and feels like I’m back to square one on other days. I love this tension and think it’s what drives me to explore the world around me every day. I can’t imagine my life without design.

I’m always trying to balance respecting the past with leaning into the future and dreaming up things that do not yet exist. When you hear a story about how someone solved a problem 50 years ago, it can either show you what they did or how they did it, but if you lean in and study the work and their life, you begin to see why they did it, and that’s the magic. You begin to understand the core motivation and the influences they had around them at the time.

It’s not enough for us to solve old problems in old ways, but rather to solve old problems in new way, or better yet, solve new problems in new ways. I love old tools. I love the utilitarian designs in the vintage military objects I collect. I like visiting places like Japan that have a long history of making things with excellence.

Stay focused. As someone with ADHD, the easiest thing is the next new thing. It’s a world of distraction that we live in. Everything is clawing for our attention, but the only way to get significant work done is be focused and finish what I start. I am developing a habit of returning to old work to try and improve it again.

When I spend time with a material or process, it leads me somewhere new. It gives me insight into how to solve problems. I start thinking about foam and resin, which leads me to other moldable materials like concrete, and then how much I like concrete and wood together, and then concrete canvas forms, and then gathering wood in the forest, oxidizing it, and what it would look like to have oxidized wood with concrete and steel and leather in the same object.

I just keep going and going and returning and rethinking about materials and form. My studio has become a playground for me. This has led me to start making art pieces. I have had a few commissioned works sell this last year and it has lit a fire under me to keep pushing myself in this direction. My art will be a further expression of the exploration of material processes that I think about constantly. Furniture is what led me to these materials, but the art works will be what I lean more into in the future. Keep an eye on the website for more information about the coming art series in 2024!