In My Obsession, one creative person reveals their most prized collection.
Stephanie D’heygere, 41, has built her seven-year-old jewelry brand, D’heygere, on the idea that anything can be an accessory. Her chokers look like bra straps and her earrings resemble doorknobs, hair clips and wads of chewing gum. But for the Belgian designer, the only thing more delightful than a piece of jewelry masquerading as an everyday object is an everyday object blown up to giant proportions. When something is exaggerated, she says, “it becomes new.” Having spent the past seven years collecting surreal, scaled-up art and design pieces, she’s running out of space in her Paris apartment. Last year, D’heygere, who dresses almost exclusively in oversize shirts, created furniture — including a giant gooseneck lamp with a base that doubles as seating — for a co-working space in Antwerp, Belgium, called Silversquare. She also runs the Instagram account @bigeverydayobjects, where she documents her encounters in the wild with everything from a cartoonishly large pair of clogs to some terra-cotta jars wide enough to fit a human. (She’d know. She got inside one.)
The collection: Oversize everyday objects.
Number of pieces in the collection: 18.
First purchase: “A metal lamp from the 1980s in the shape of a daffodil. I bought it in Switzerland seven years ago and took it back on the train.”
Weirdest: “A champagne cork that’s also a stool. You can separate the wire top so you have two seats.”
Most expensive: A kitchenette and coffee bar in the shape of a Bialetti percolator that D’heygere conceived for the Antwerp co-working space. It cost almost $175,000 to produce. “It’s divided across two floors, so you can’t see it in its entirety.”
Most precious: “Next to the Bialetti, we have little tables that look like huge sugar cubes.”
Least expensive: “An oversize prop comb that was a gift from my assistant.”
Latest purchase: “A two-foot-tall ceramic sculpture by [the Brussels-based artist] Leo Luccioni of a Haribo candy shaped like Smurfette.”
When she realized she was a collector: “When I started buying artworks, not just vintage props, and it became a little more expensive.”
Most far-flung: “I travel to see huge things. In Mexico City, there’s a dentist’s office in the shape of a tooth. I’d love to go to Konagai, a town in Japan where the bus stops are made to look like fruit.”
Most tempting: “I’m having a two-and-a-half-foot-tall [acrylic] nail 3-D-printed for a presentation during Paris Fashion Week this fall. I’d like to bring it back to my bathroom afterward, but I guess it’ll go to the office. I live with my boyfriend, so the idea is not to fill the [house] with big stuff.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Photo assistant: Britt Vangenechten
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