Ep. 146: Roman Alonso of Commune Design

Principal of Commune Design, Roman Alonso grew up in Caracas Venezuela, often traveling around in a motorhome with his family to escape to nature, before moving to Miami as a teenager. He attended Boston University, with the underlying fantasy of getting to New York. After college, he got a job at Barney’s in New York, wrote for the style section of The New York Times, and started a publishing company, Greybull Press. Commune was founded in 2004 in Los Angeles and since then Roman and partner Steven Johanknecht have grown it into a vibrant community of creatives, a Commune Shop, and impressive international hospitality projects, including many Ace Hotels, that have the adventurous, warm spirit Roman brings to everything he does.

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Roman Alonso: A lot of the times you can’t fight it, you need to really roll with what’s happening to achieve the best outcome. I learned a long time ago that sometimes you just have to let it go and let it kind of take care of itself. 

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today I’m talking to Roman Alonso of Commune Design. Commune is an acclaimed Los Angeles-based design studio with a reputation for holistic work across the fields of architecture, interior, graphic, and product design. With Principals Roman Alonso and Steven Johanknecht, the studio has designed residential, commercial, and hospitality projects worldwide including a long-running relationship with Ace Hotels and has recently finished the Ace Hotel in Kyoto. They’ve also designed graphic and branding concepts for the fashion, arts, and entertainment industries and a wide array of home and lifestyle products many of which are offered in the Commune Shop online. The list of awards goes on and on including a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, several years on the AD 100 list, Wallpaper Design Magazine awards, and a Los Angeles Preservation Conservancy Award for their work on The Ace in downtown Los Angeles among others. The recently published book, Design Commune, is a gorgeous and sensual look at their work and a discussion of their design philosophies. Roman’s story is one marked by resilience, adaptability, beautiful relationships, a profound love of collaboration and a warm-spirited lust for life. Here’s Roman. 

RA: My name is Roman Alonso and I live in Los Angeles and I work in Los Angeles and I am a principle at Commune Design here on Los Angeles and I do what I do because, well, because I love it and also because I’m here. I’m here to do it! [Laughter]

AD: So let’s dial back all the way to the beginning because you were born in Caracas, Venezuela, is that correct? 

RA: That’s right. I was born in Caracas, in Venezuela. My parents are Cuban, my whole family is Cuban actually, my brother and I are the only Venezuelans. And let’s see, life in Caracas in the 70s was good. It’s a beautiful place to grow up in. We lived very urban childhood, but also marked with a lot of trips to nature. We spent a lot of time travelling around the country. I didn’t get on a plane until I was 11. My parents didn’t really believe in that. They thought airplanes were for adults, you know? 

My parents bought a motorhome at one point and we, I think we were maybe one of two people that first had motorhomes in Venezuela. We would drive into towns that people had never seen that before and kids would follow us. It was really interesting to explore. We drove all over Venezuela and all over Columbia. 

And yeah, it was a childhood marked with a lot of time in nature, although we lived right in the center of the city. I’ve always had a deep connection to nature and continue to do so. 

AD: How did it make an impact on you to be able to drive around in this home? 

RA: Well, it made us kind of nomadic in a way, which was really interesting because a lot of my friends had houses in different places, right? And we would visit these houses in our motorhome and park in front of them. So we’d go on vacation and we would go visit so and so at their beach house but we would be parked in front. And sometimes we’d drive into a town and we’d park in the central plaza and open up the awning and that’s where we would stay and people would come by to sort of visit and ask, “What is this? Can we see?” And my mom would show the women how tiny our kitchen was and that kind of stuff. So, my parents bought the motorhome at an auto show in Caracas and there were two model motorhomes and they bought one of them and so we immediately started using it. So we really were like the first people to have it. 

AD: I’m sure like the engineering of fitting everything into such a tiny space must have been kind of interesting. But also the spectacle of being one of the first people with a motorhome must have been kind of theatrical. 

RA: I have interesting memories of it, for sure. And yeah, I mean the efficiency of it taught me a lot about life because it was very minimal in its construction. And it was sort of incredibly practical. So that, with the motorhome was, yeah, it taught me a lot about [0.05.00] what was needed, as opposed to what you wanted to have for comfort. It was like what did you actually need for comfort. 

AD: So you were very sort of tuned into the essentials from a young age. 

RA: Yeah and you know, I think living in Latin America there’s always that dichotomy where you might be living in what’s considered luxury, but your life experience isn’t necessarily always that. You know, the happiest moments are the simpler moments or the moments in the simplest of environments. Eating arepas on the street or eating an empanada that somebody fried for you right at the beach side was way more interesting, way more enjoyable, way more, sort of soulful than Sunday lunch at the club, you know what I’m saying? That was boring and terrible -

AD: Were you a close family, did you feel very close with your brother?

RA: Yeah, our family was immediately close knit, but we weren’t really close to a very extended family. And you know, it gets very complicated very quickly because we had to leave Venezuela. And it was due to what really amounts to a telenovela. It’s a very long story, which I won’t get into, but it splintered what was a very fragile situation within our family. 

And we ended up in Miami, very much in our nucleus, without that extended family, very, very far away from it and then my parents divorced. So the nucleus became even smaller and in a way we kind of were left almost like as castaways in this new country, in Miami. We didn’t really know anybody; my mom really didn’t know anybody and we were left alone, to rebuild our lives. And my mom is a Cuban exilée and so she’s been exiled twice. 

In that move we kind of lost everything and had to start all over again. So we grew up with the sense of immediacy, that kind of thing of like, we had a lot, then we had nothing, then we had a lot again, then we had nothing again. That’s happened a few times. And so we always learned, you really need to live in the moment, always, like really live in the moment and enjoy what you have because you don’t know if you’re going to have it tomorrow. So that was something that from a very early age, my brother and I kind of understood and lived by. And it shapes your life, it really does. 

AD: I believe it, how old were you when you immigrated to Miami?

RA: I was 13 years old. 

AD: And the divorce, did this happen concurrently?

RA: Yeah, oh yeah. i’m telling you, it was a telenovela, it was definitely a soap opera in life. A lot of things happened. It was a dark period in our lives, which made living in Miami and going to high school in Miami really hell. I hated it! And I couldn’t wait to get out of there. It really pushed me to get out of there and to get out of that life. And so I did. [Laughs]

AD: So pushing yourself to get out of Miami was there a pull also, I mean obviously there was a push to get away, [0.10.00] but what were you being pulled towards? And I ask only to sort of understand the full scope of things because, I mean this sounds like a really traumatic experience, but you also sound like you’ve processed it in such a way that you’ve distilled out the really positive elements of what it was for you as well. 

RA: Yeah, I think it’s funny how certain things carry on from generation to generation. And I think that we, my brother and I might have been sort of born ready for this because my grandparents and my parents were both first generation immigrants. And, as I said, my mom had to leave her country very quickly with nothing, arrive in a new country and then do it again. In a way it wasn’t, it was traumatic, in retrospect, more than it was at the moment. And you sort of live through it, and you sort of save yourself. It makes you very resilient and very strong, these kinds of experiences and I share them with millions and millions of people that know what I’m talking about. It’s like when you are moving from country to country, from life to life, you lose your home a couple of times, at an early age, it gives you a certain, it makes you resilient and it makes you strong. It made me very aware of what I call the gifts from the universe. That thing of like, what is the universe presenting to you and you have a choice whether to take that or walk through that door or not. You become very good at making these choices. 

AD: Yes, you must have been very tuned into your intuition and your gut from a very young age, having to make these really important and big deal choices. 

RA: Yes and I grew up very lucky to have a mother who supported whatever I felt was my path at the moment. She never pushed me in any direction, she just wanted me to do what made me happy and again, because of that whole thing, like you better really enjoy your life right now because you just don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. And I didn’t know what I wanted, and she supported that. She supported the fact that I didn’t know and that I needed to sort of find out on my own, and yeah, unconditionally. She supported me going to college without really an idea of what I wanted to study and I never really did, even through college, know what I wanted to do. And I tried a lot of different things. I went to college in Boston, really only because I wanted to live in New York. And I got into school in Boston. 

I went to Boston University, I got into that school and it was a good school and she was like, just go there and eventually you’ll make it to New York. Because my goal was really to live in New York. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in New York, but I wanted to live in New York. It was something I wanted to do since I was, it was the first time I ever went to New York, I was like 11 I think, I would go to summer camp in Massachusetts, a couple of times when I was 11 and 12. And it was my first time out of the country and they sent me by myself, with a friend to this camp and after that experience in camp in Massachusetts, when I was 11, my parents took me to New York and to Washington DC and to Miami, we went to Disney World and all that stuff. It was like this one trip, I had not travelled outside of Venezuela really until that time. 

New York made a really huge impression and from that moment on I always wanted to go back and I did a couple of times at an early age. [0.15.00] And when I became a teenager, when I wanted to leave Miami, I, my life in Miami became possible only because of my fantasising about living a different life in New York. And I would fantasize about that life through magazines. 

I was sort of obsessed with interview and with details, when it was still like a downtown magazine, I had a subscription and those magazines would arrive every month and my friends and I were really tuned in. My friends, we looked Vogue and GQ and all that stuff, but it was like the life that interview and details in particular showed me that downtown sort of life in New York, really appealed to me. 

I didn’t know what I was going to need to do to get that, but that’s what I wanted. That’s what I wanted to be part of. And I would dream about that, through high school. And that’s what got me through, the possibility that this would happen. So the minute I arrived in Boston and I went to school there, I would try and go to New York as much as possible. So my friends and I, at the time there were People’s Express, which was this airplane that took you from Logan Airport to LaGuardia for $18. This is the late 80s, yeah, so we would, like on Friday night we would take the last plane out, which I think was at 9:00, you literally got on the plane and you paid on the plane and they would give you an apple [laughter] because you were going to the Big Apple [laughter] and this plane was, I remember it being almost like a bus, like I don’t remember even having closed overhead. 

It was like a party plane because it was the last plane out on Friday night and we would go and go clubbing all night and then the next morning we’d take the first plane back to Boston. So we would spend the whole night out. We would have breakfast at 2nd Avenue deli and then go back to LaGuardia. And so we did that many times and then I started seeing a girl who had a car and we would drive sometimes to New York. We made friends in New York. 

And then senior year I had a roommate whose boyfriend lived in New York and was a pot dealer to the stars - he knew a lot of people downtown, people from Paper and stuff. So we started hanging out with him and through him I met and was sort of thrown into the world that I had always kind of wanted to be part of. 

AD: You manifested it into being. 

RA: Yeah, it’s weird how that happened, but it did. 

AD: It’s not that weird when you think that every single choice you made was in that direction.

RA: At that time then I had decided, like I’m going to work in a magazine, that’s kind of what I wanted to do. I had interned, this magazine called Stuff. I used to intern for, I would sell ads. I would do little graphic design projects that kind of stuff. I got to New York and I applied both at Hirst and Conde Naste. You would go, at the time, just go to the human resources department and you’d apply and they’d give you like an interview. 

And they’d call you when there was a position available and in one of their magazines. So oddly enough, while I waited for that job [laughs] I worked at an interior design firm for like three months. I never imagined that I would ever be into design, or at the time it was like, this is just while I was waiting for a job in a magazine. But I did work for a design company that did [0.20.00] the offices, at the time they were working in the offices for American Express in the World Trade Center. So I spent a lot of time up there. 

Because they were installing, you know. So I actually spent a lot of time, I forget what floor, but it was pretty high up. Where we were installing this office. [Laughs] It was like a steel case, you know, a company that worked with steel case or something. And so they called me from Hirst and there was a job at Connoisseur and I took it and it was just, I didn’t even care what job it was, it was in the production department. And what I did was basically traffic pages for a year. I would take the layout around the magazine for approval. I would take them to all the different editors and they would sign off on the mechanicals, because there was no internet or computers or anything like that. There were word processors and stuff, but all the art departments still worked -

AD: The Exactos and Loops and Lucy Tables -

RA: Yeah, I mean this was 1987. It was fun in that I got to know how the magazine kind of operated and I got to know a lot of people in the magazine. And then from there I went to work at Mirabella magazine and that was kind of the first job that was PR related. And at each of these places, it was really school, because while I was in college, I didn’t really focus on school academically so much. I changed majors so many times, that’s why I ended up with an art history major because I just had all these credits. I focused on art history but I took journalism and I did photo journalism and film and -

AD: You were improving your life and learning from experience. 

RA: Yeah, I think I was and I was really focused on meeting people who I wanted to know and hang out with and who might lead me to the things I wanted perhaps, even if I didn’t know what the hell I wanted. I had no idea. 

But New York was great and I loved those jobs. I made zero money and because I made zero money, I started taking these freelance jobs with Barney’s. My girlfriend at the time, we bumped into a friend from college who was older than us and she worked in the PR department at Barney’s. We literally bumped into her on the street on 7th Avenue and I had a job and Lisa, my girlfriend didn’t. And so this woman, Felicia, said to her, “We’re looking for somebody in the PR department, would you like a job?” 

And so Lisa went to work there. And because of her I got to know the people in the department and they started giving me these freelance jobs, Malory Andrews, who ran the department, really liked my handwriting, so I’d do these, I would do like calligraphy on their envelopes and I would address a thousand envelopes over a weekend and I would make a thousand bucks, which was a lot of money. 

And so these little jobs with Barney’s introduced me to what they did and they were a piece of that world that I really kind of wanted to be part of. I was at Mirabella and I was at a party and Malory told me she was looking for someone to add to the department and I took that job, which was really a PR coordinator at the time. She needed somebody to travel to all the different stores that were opening. It was in 1990/91, so it was the first expansion that Barney’s went through. 

And so all of a sudden I was at Barney’s [0.25.00] and that was great. It was an amazing time to be there and I was working with the people who I used to kind of read about, Glenn O’Brien, whose column I used to read religiously in high school. 

AD: Wow and did you feel sort of like you were meant to be there? Or did you feel like, I’m so lucky, I hope they don’t find out that I’m a fraud [laughs]. I know imposter syndrome is something that we all have, I’m just trying to get inside your mindset at the time. 

RA: I know that syndrome quite well! [Laughter] Everything I’ve ever done! I felt very lucky to be there because it was kind of at the center of what I had always, the place I always wanted to be at. And Barney’s at the time was really the center of that culture. I was just really focused on doing a good job. I wanted to be good and I wanted to learn as much as I could and absorb as much as I could and I did. It was an education. And that’s where I met Steven Johanknecht, who is my partner at Commune. We’ve worked together since. 

AD: I understand, just from what you’ve told me and some of the research that I’ve done, that that period at Barney’s, well, first of all being at the center of that culture is really influential. But also in a really collaborative environment working with other people like you who are at the top of their game and really bringing a lot of energy and creativity to the whole mix. It must have felt like this wonderful crucible?

RA: Yeah, particularly in retrospect because at the time you’re in it, you know - You’re just in it, so it really is, in retrospect that I realized the influence that it had in me and how much I learned and how what I learned there has been so meaningful in all my different lives that I’ve lived since then and all my different endeavours, professionally. At the time it was just, really fun actually, and interesting. I loved it for a long time. I was there for about five years. And a lot happened in those five years. 

But we were a department that handled everything that had to do with the image of the store. It was a department that was made up of advertising, store design, display and PR, which was publicity; we called it publicity at the time. And we all worked very closely together on anything that had to do with the store’s identity. So whether it was a launch of a designer, for example, whoever that designer might be, all the efforts were coordinated. The advertising, the launch event, the windows, what happened at the store, so this kind of very holistic approach is something that Steven and I really got used to. We first hand understood the advantages of it. It is one of the things that I think has shaped how we work today. It’s that consideration of all the different sides of something, whether it’s designing a napkin or designing a hotel [0.30.00]. What are you going to do with it, who is going to use it, how is it going to be used? You ask so many questions and back then it was a room full of people asking those questions from their own point of view. So things got dialled in really, really well and one of the things I think that separated Barney’s at the time from other stores was that incredible attention to detail at all levels. 

We didn’t miss a thing. It always felt, whatever we did, felt right, at whatever level because it had been vetted and considered from all aspects over and over again. And there were people that obviously taught us that really well and the Pressman family really expected it. It kind of made us who we are, I think professionally because that comes into play all the time. Even how we’ve worked with our staff all along. I mean we’ve passed that on. 

AD: So I know there’s a few steps in between Barney’s and Commune. So what is the importance or what happened between Barney’s and Commune that’s relevant to the Commune story that we should know? Because you went to work for Isaac Mizrahi and started a publishing imprint as well, right? 

RA: Yeah, I mean I worked for Isaac for about three years also as his image director and there my responsibilities sort of expanded from my responsibilities at Barney’s in terms of, I was all of a sudden in charge of advertising and show production and I started working on things related to licensing. You know, in 1995 I started travelling to Japan, for example, because of Isaac and his licensing deal there. So then I was introduced to a lot of different things that when you add everything up [laughs] it kind of made me ready for what I do now. You don’t recognize it at the time, you just, you know, are sort of racking up experiences. I was always interested in the work I was doing. When I wasn’t interested in it anymore, I would move on. And that’s kind of why I went to Isaac because I just wasn’t satisfied with doing press work anymore at Barney’s. I had sort of hit a wall and I was a little burned out from dealing with the press all the time. 

And so I moved on because I had new responsibilities at Isaac, which were, all of a sudden I could do advertising and be in charge of that. And I could also do what I really loved to do, was event production. 

 And work with all the people that made that happen because my love has always been working with creative people in one way or another, either making of things, or producing things, that’s always been what I love, right? And so I got to do that at a different level at Isaac and then he expanded my horizons because he put me in charge of things that I didn’t know anything about, like licensing. And what that had to do in terms of his image. So I did that for a while and then he closed his company and I was sort of interviewing for jobs, fashion had, the business had really changed. It was the time when LVMH and Prada were kind of taking over. 

And there was a sort of culture moving in, so I interviewed for a bunch of jobs, corporate jobs. And in the process of that, I came out to LA to visit my friend, Lisa Eisner, we met through Isaac and who I worked with [0.35.00] because of Isaac she’s been a huge, she was a huge part of me making that move. She brought me out to LA, really to think about what I wanted to do and in the process she and I started working on these books that we wanted to make. 

We both collected books and we loved working with each other, we had realized that. We really were good partners, creatively. And we started a publishing company called Greybull Press. That was in the year, it was 1999. And so I said no to the jobs in New York. I fully moved to LA and focused on publishing these amazing art books and that opened up a whole other world for me where I was making something else with really talented people. 

Lisa and I would approach these photographers and artists and it’s amazing when you offer somebody the opportunity to do a book of their work how much they open their world to you. 

AD: Right, it’s documentarian in that way. 

RA: And at the same time Amy Spindler, who was a dear friend, the late Amy Spindler, was a genius editor at the New York Times, offered us a gig at the New York Times magazine. We would do these stories for a style section on culture. And it was basically anything we wanted to do. That paired with the book publishing company gave Lisa and I an incredible amount of access. So sometimes we’d just like pinch ourselvess. All the things that we got to do and the people we got to meet and interview. It was like an adventure, those years, for about five years that’s all I did exclusively is this gig at the Times and the books. But there’s no money to be made there and my severance package from Isaac had definitely run out [laughter] a long time prior to that. And I needed to get a job, you know, at some point I was going to have to get a job and I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do in LA. 

And Steven had moved to San Francisco from New York to work at The Gap which is what a lot of people in New York did at the time to get out of New York. They would go work at The Gap and [laughs] so he wanted to leave San Francisco and move to LA. And that was kind of the, yeah, that’s what kind of made, set the stage for Commune to happen, because he wanted to do interior design in LA. And we had an opportunity to help a couple of people and there were a couple of other friends of mine who also wanted to do that kind of work. 

And out of that the company was born. And the rest is history, that was in 2003 I didn’t need to get a job after all. 

AD: [Laughter] That’s what I was gonna say, most people when they need to get a job, they don’t think, I’ll start a new company. But it sounds like through all of your relationships that you had built up so far, and all of your experience, the time was right to work on a few projects, interior design projects with Steven and friends, and those projects were the start of Commune? You were able to launch a studio based on having gotten a few projects to start with? 

RA: We had really varied backgrounds the four of us. And so the idea was that we would kind of put together everything that was needed to holistically tackle design problems. And it was really like a lucky break that the two small jobs that we had in hand, both for friends, needed everything, right? 

So for example, one was [0.40.00] this little jean store on Beverly Boulevard and it was called The Hollywood Training Company. And there was this guy we had met while doing an interview for the New York Times magazine, a story about Fred Segel and Ron Herman and this guy that worked at Ron Herman, all of a sudden was opening his own store, and he needed help. And I was like, oh, well, Steven can maybe help him with that. 

But he also needed packaging everything that went along with it. 

AD: And he needed graphics and he needed press and he needed the whole, yeah, the whole holistic kit and caboodle. 

RA: Yeah, so we started with this idea where we would do graphics and brand management and we would do interiors and anything that was necessary. And we had the tools because we had the people that could do all those things. We had, at the time, rolodexes, that were pretty hefty and we could get anybody from our past to kind of contribute to these jobs. 

So that’s how we started with just a couple of jobs like that. And then one thing led to another. One of our first clients was Barney’s actually; they hired us to do a concept for the co-op. The co-op was expanding out of New York to all the other markets and they needed fixtures. And so we put a fixture program for them together. And then you know, someone that worked at Barney’s went to work at Stila Cosmetics who had been sold to Estee Lauder. 

And that person who had been our friend and co-worker years before hired us to do their packaging and their, like sort of redo their identity, their graphic identity. And so we did, you know, and Stila was a brand that we had launched at Barney’s. 

AD: Wow. 

RA: In 1991, but that’s how Commune started really, was us making ourselves available for a wide variety of services and at the time there really wasn’t anybody out here that did that kind of work that was really that multidisciplinary in scope. We kind of got a decent amount of work because of it. And since nobody was looking over here, this was kind of the Wild West and we could really try things out and not feel like we were under a microscope at all. And we were very quiet about the whole thing for a few years. I mean I was basically helping the company kind of, it’s profile was really trying to handle how we’re going to sort of profile ourselves and present ourselves. 

And for the first three years I remember telling my partners, we’re not going to say a peep, nothing, no press, no nothing. We’re gonna wait until we have something to talk about and so we did. I mean it’s unheard of today because it’s so instant, you know? 

AD: Right. 

RA: But for three, almost four years, we didn’t say anything, we just worked.

AD: Can you let me in on that decision making because as a PR and press person, you would have had some insight to making that choice?  What was that about? 

RA: Well, I wanted to make sure that we presented ourselves as a serious endeavour. We already were coming from a place where we weren’t really designers; we had been other things, really technically. And so now we’re going to be that and we needed to, I think, have proof of it. 

AD: Sure and freedom from scrutiny for a little while to get your legs under you. 

RA: Absolutely. 

AD: Okay. 

RA: Yeah, and I didn’t want us to be like this flash in the pan thing. And although I had friends in the press that really wanted, like we should do something about you guys, no, no, not yet, you know? And [laughs] so we kind of controlled that narrative for a while and eventually, once we did have some press [0.45.00], then we got busier and busier and we grew a lot, too much in fact. But the crash in 2008 sort of took care of that. So again, the universe speaks [laughter]. 

AD: Yes, yes!

RA: That’s not what you’re supposed to be. [Laughs] You’re supposed to be something else; this is not what you want to be. You want to be something else. And so the correct happens. It’s always been that way, interestingly enough, I mean for me it’s always been that way. I’ve always had to just keep the noise and the distraction away so that I can listen to what’s happening and to really listen to my instincts and that’s always been the best guide. It’s when it gets noisy that problems arise. So I’ve learned that.

AD: How do you keep the distraction and the noise away? What do you do when it gets noisy?

RA: You meditate, you get lost in nature, you get some therapy, [laughter] all those things really help. The important thing is to recognize what’s like once you recognize, oh shit, like this is not working, I’m not happy with this. It used to be living in New York is like, so what if you’re stressed out? 

AD: Right, it was almost a badge of courage or something. 

RA: Yeah. That was part of living there and working there and in fact, you know, you better enjoy being stressed out because otherwise just get out of it, right? 

AD: Right, otherwise this ain’t the life for you [laughs]. 

RA: It is not, yeah, but that’s very different. Once I moved out here, it was very different, it wasn’t about that anymore. All of a sudden I had the space to kind of get to know myself better and listen to what I wanted and didn’t know I wanted because I couldn’t, I just couldn’t hear it before. I was just going with it. Going with what was in front of me or ahead of me. And in work you’re just climbing up all the time, you just want to go up, up, up, up, you know, professionally and it’s all about how much money you make and what benefits you get. 

I had somebody at the time who said to me, you know, you can definitely change your life, but you’re going to have to let go of all the benefits. And I didn’t understand what they meant by that. And this is when I moved out here. And I was like, what are they talking about, benefits, like what, what? And then it started becoming very obvious to me that they were talking about what you get from being at a certain position, a certain level, professionally, in that world. In that world of, particularly the world of fashion in New York where you would arrive at a certain level and all these things came with it. 

Clothing allowances and travel allowances and all these, what we call ‘golden handcuffs.’ And then also the satisfaction of being recognized as a professional. 

AD: It’s credibility, it’s respect, but it’s also a bit of ego satisfaction. 

RA: All about ego. Because the title is so important and these benefits are so important and then your salary is so important. What I realized when I got here is like, none of that mattered here. Nobody cared, nobody cared what I did before I got here, that’s one of the beautiful things about LA, nobody asks you -

AD: It’s a weird reset going from New York to LA isn’t it? 

RA: Yeah. Nobody cares about what you were doing last week, you’re only as good as your, the thing you’re doing this very minute. And that is great for reinvention. It allows you to become whoever you want to become or whoever you need to become. So yeah, I couldn’t have done it anywhere else. It’s all a result of coming here. 

AD: So the growth that happened just prior to the crash, was that, do you think, just the nature of you and Steven sort of defaulting to a New York way of growing, saying yes to everything and building the company and then when the crash happened was that sort of a reckoning where you realized you were growing it into something you didn’t want anyway, so let’s take stock of what we have and move forward? 

RA: Yeah, I mean at the time, you know, there were four of us partners and none of us had ever had our own firm with our own employees or anything like that. Steven and I had worked in a number of corporate jobs and definitely knew how to… We both had run departments, so we definitely knew how to manage people, but we didn’t know anything about business. And you’re just responding to what comes through the door and so our response to new work was just hire more people. And it got a little bit out of hand and then we didn’t know that you never ever, ever assign a large percentage of your employees to one client. Because the minute that client is gone, you have to lay off all those people. 

AD: Oh no, yeah, that would be a tough thing to learn on the job. 

RA: You only learn it by doing it. And so that’s what happened. I mean we lost certain clients who were really important in that sense and we had to downsize drastically and it was a terrible experience. I still have PTSD from it, I had never been through something like that before where I had to lay off all these people within a week. 

AD: Oh my gosh!

RA: Including one of my best friends who was running the firm for us at the time and it was just terrible. 

AD: Oh, Roman, just from what I’ve learned from you in this story so far, I can tell that you really value your relationships and that all these people that you’ve collected in your life are, you’ve nurtured these relationships and so when you say you have PTSD from it, I totally believe you. That must have been so intense. 

RA: It was rough, but hey, you learn so much from these things. [Laughs]

AD: Sure, sure and you also, you learn how to be sort of gracious and minimize the pain, even though the pain has to happen for people, and you understand that maybe even they’re going to move onto something better and it’s a good life lesson for them. But gosh. 

RA: It was not pretty, but, and yet, when I say the universe spoke - Listen I’m really, really grateful because that really seismic event at the time, I mean we were 40 people in the company and when this happened we had been, we were in the process of building an office for 40 people down the block. And all of this collapsed, we ended up being like 12 people, from 40 we went down to 12 and when we moved into the new office, there were 12 of us in this space for 40. 

AD: Oh!

RA: And we had to recalibrate in a big way because the clients had gone, all the retail clients had gone, it was rough. And so we had to be super nimble and turn around and we started seeing the opportunity, different opportunities and sort of our brand management and graphics area kind of took over because all these friends of ours that had gone to all these different companies, they were all looking for ways to change their retail experiences and how to change their brands and stuff. 

And because we were out here and we were kind of out of sight, we were kind of the perfect place for them to experiment things. So we started doing this kind of work that was completely different but we were like, yeah, sure, we’ll do it, right? And at the same time we had all these people that were making things for us because from the beginning at Commune it was always about the makers [0.55.00], right, about all these artisans and craftsmen that would make really special things and custom things for our projects, always. 

RA: And it comes from the fact that it’s something that we really love to do and Steven and I in particular have always loved to do it from the time we were at Barney’s because at Barney’s we would collaborate with all kinds of people on all kinds of projects. It’s almost like being a frustrated artist, you can’t be an artist yourself, but all you want to do is work with other artists and kind of harness their talent. And so you learn that process and once you, for me, once I got caught in that process, it was like an addiction. Like I just, I can’t not do that. I love it and it’s what I kind of love doing most, right? So Commune and its interior design part of it is almost an excuse to do all these things. 

AD: I can see that, yes, and every interior design project that comes along fuels your outreach to new artisans, new crafts people, new textile artists in order to fuel those collaborations. 

RA: About 80% of what we do in a project is either customized or commissioned, it’s because that’s what we like to do. I don’t know how to do it any other way. In fact, I’m not interested in doing it any other way. So it’s become part of our philosophy, right, that it’s all about the handcrafted and it’s all about the work of artisans and stuff, but it’s really more than that. It’s just this is how we like to do it and I’m not going to do jobs where I can’t do that. If I can’t do that, if that’s not part of the job, then I’m not interested in it. It’s really the heart of it. And what that situation of losing the jobs that provided us the opportunity to work with these people, so what that produced was, it kind of opened the door because to keep these people going and I felt really bad because you know, they’re all hurting, financially and creatively they were sort of, they didn’t have that much to do.

So it’s when we decided to talk to each of these people and say, hey, why don’t we make some things and we’ll sell them, right? Let’s start selling some of your work to the public. And all these things kind of happened at the same time, you know, our office was this big office where we had all this room, so we pitched a tent and we opened the store [laughter] -

AD: I love this!

RA: Literally, we literally pitched a tent [laughter] and put the stuff in it and all of a sudden the public was allowed to come into our studio and shop. And then at the same time we finished the Ace in Palm Springs, it was the first hotel project. And we finished it right when all of this happened and there was a retail space at the hotel that of course nobody was going to take because, you know, the economy was in the toilet. So they gave us the space for free, for us to also open a little store there. And this is how we started selling the work of our friends and people that we were making things with. And -

AD: I remember this actually. I was living in LA at the time and Tanya Aguiñiga is a great friend of mine and I know she was working with you on some collaborations and when this popup happened, I was like, what is this? What’s happening here? I don’t know, but it’s very cool. 

RA: And we called it the Community Shop and popup wasn’t even in the vocabulary. We were calling them guerilla stores.’

AD: Yeah, it was a new model. 

RA: Yeah, it was the new model that we copied from COMME des GARÇONS because you know, nobody, actually nobody, I guess, gives them the credit. But the original popup store was the COMME des GARÇONS guerilla store. And we were very much in tune [1.00.00] with that because we came from the fashion business. 

RA: And Rei Kawakubo was a huge sort of hero of ours. So we called them ‘guerilla stores’ because that’s what she called them. I think popup really happened later. That word hadn’t happened. A couple of years later after the tsunami in Japan, we had met some friends from Japan who I’m still really good friends with. They run Landscape Products and they were the first people to come to that tent, okay -

 He heard about it, came to the tent, I met him, he bought a bunch of stuff from us, took it back to Japan and sold it at his store, at Play Mountain and we became friends. And a couple of years later is when the tsunami happened and he reached out to us and we did a bunch of products with him that he, we designed all this stuff and he made it in Japan and he sold it in what we called a ‘popup tour.’ So those couple of years made a big difference because all of a sudden popup did become part of the vocabulary. 

And that popup tour, everything that we made benefitted this one town that was erased by the tsunami. And he created a coffee shop for the town because that’s how he felt the town needed to begin again. A place where people could go and get a coffee and talk, which was so profound. And so we’re like, yeah, we’ll help you. And so all the proceeds of everything we made at that popup tour in Japan, because he took it around Japan, went to this endeavour, this little thing. 

But that was the first time I ever used the word ‘popup,’ it was that tour, that little Japanese, yeah. The Community Shop really became the thing that propelled us to start making product. And soon enough, we realized that being shopkeepers was not our thing. I mean we were starting to get work again and it was important that the studio have our attention because we needed to build that up again. 

And we were starting to get work again, it started happening soon after, we started finding work. So we closed these guerilla stores, popup shops and we moved everything online. And that’s the first time we did an online shop and that’s where Commune Shop started. 

AD: That’s where Commune Shop started and that’s where it lives today and it’s an ongoing curated collection of these collaborations that you do with manufacturers, but artists and crafts people and confectioners. [Laughs]

RA: Yeah, all kinds of things -I mean anything that we feel design can play a part in and that we love or want to use in our work. 

AD: But I’ll say it’s even more than that because, the things that you love and want to use in your work is also your way of celebrating that creativity and those makers and those artists and so it’s not just a capitalistic endeavour, it’s very much - A way for you to cultivate these relationships and celebrate these people. 

RA: Oh yeah, it’s far from capitalistic, I mean it really has never been capitalistic because even when you go back, all the way back to Barney’s, when we used to do these collaborations with people, it was usually for charity. Projects that we would do for MFAR or whatever, that’s when we would reach out to someone like Jenny Holzer and be like, will you make stockings with us because we’re going to do this thing for MFAR and we can sell them at the store. So we were doing that way back then, okay? And then you know, like move up to, keep going and Greybull Press and that was never a capitalistic endeavour, I mean -

AD: Right, you needed to get a job to support that endeavour. 

RA: Yeah, publishing books doesn’t make money, it costs money. [Laughs] We would approach people like you know, we would go to someone like Joe Szabo who had done this book called Teenage and we’d be like, [1.05.00] we did a book called Teenage with him, but like he hadn’t really done a book since 1980 or something. We’d be like, it’s time for you to do another book, we will pay for it. With the money we don’t have [laughter] and we just want to work with you and work with your work, with your material. 

And the same thing, and you know, that’s the same way that we would approach Richard Prince when we did a book with him or we approached Ron Gallela or Dennis Hopper, any of the people, Robert Crumb, we worked with all these people and did books for them. But it was like all we wanted from them was the opportunity to work with them and their incredible work. Just being able to, for them to give us the time and the opportunity to work with their stuff was enough, you know? And so we would find a way to pay for this stuff and it took a lot of work to do that. 

AD: And I feel like this energy that you bring to your desire to work with these people and celebrate and immerse yourself in, that is what they do, it comes through in your spaces. I want to talk about the Commune Shop and your collaborations, but I also want to just acknowledge that the spaces you design feel like a real celebration of people throughout history, of diverse relationships, even just the objects in a space seem very much about honoring the user, who is unknown to you at that point, but there’s a warmth and there’s a connection between everything in that room that makes someone who is not there yet, feel welcome when they arrive. It’s a very resonant way of working that feels very, very immersed in humanity and something just so lovely and warm about it Roman. Just -

RA: Thank you Amy. It is very much so, all those things, because for us, for Steven and I,, in terms of the client, it’s their personality. It’s who they are, and to make sure that their spaces and their homes reflect who they are. Or if it’s a brand, that the hotel reflects who they are, who the brand is, etc. That’s really the focus of our work, is to bring about something that is uniquely theirs and that reflects their personality. 

But in the process you’re bringing in the work of other people and their personality comes with that. So this collection of objects and things, functional or decorative, what appeals to us is, are things that were made, design made by someone, right? And that carries that person in them - Through history, it doesn’t have to be current. But it’s something that reflects someone’s sort of mind or hands or soul. The collection of all these things creates an environment that yeah, people describe as layered, most personalities are layered. So mission accomplished, if a space is layered, it’s layered with personality, great, I’ll take that. But really I think what people feel and it is way more important for me how it feels than how it looks is what they feel, I think is a person, whoever it is, that lives there, hopefully and hopefully the space is as interesting as they are. We try to find that. We try to find the layers in the person and bring them about in their space. [

All these things that are handmade or handcrafted are really important. They’re not only important to the space and to the client, but they’re important to us [laughs]. 

AD: Right, which I think is so obvious, I can totally tell that, I can feel that in a space. It’s not just that you found something and put it there because it looks cool, there’s something much much more soulful at work in your spaces. And I think that that’s really made evident in your creative process in terms of how you collaborate with people, particularly, you shared with me something I think that is really amazing about the way that you work with artisans and crafts people to create the things that you offer in the Commune Shop. And you shared that you have golden rules of artists collaboration that you live and work by, that you’ve developed over the years of collaborating with people. -

RA: Yeah, we do, we do have rules. 

AD: Yes, and I wanna unpack some of them. There are 13 rules and they are beautiful and as somebody who is also a maker, I really appreciate that these are the kinds of things that you’re working with in the studio. But do you mind if I go through them and unpack some of them with you? 

RA: No, no, of course not. 

AD: Okay, so some of them are sort of self-evident, good intentions bring great results and that’s rule number one. But I also love that you put a lot of attention on communication. Make sure you say what you mean, clearly, you build in room for the sort of unpredictable nature of making, allow margin for error, rule number five. Accidents are not always a bad thing, roll with it, which seems to me like very you. Like that’s your whole life. [Laughs]

RA: Oh yeah! And it’s how I tackle every single problem, which you know, in our design work, in our interior design work in particular, I think, as designers, we’re really problem solvers more than anything else. It’s all about troubleshooting. And that’s been a constant in my life. And a lot of the times you can’t fight it, you kind of have to really roll with what’s happening, to achieve the best outcome in the big picture. You could dig your heels in but that may not serve you well in the end. And you kind of have to anticipate what your end result might be if you take that position. And I learned a long time ago that sometimes you just have to let go and let it kind of take care of itself. 

 And just watch it very closely. Make sure that it’s not going to crumble in front of you, but you can take it to a really far place, almost to that point and it can still be the best possible outcome from it. So yeah, I roll with it and then keep an eye on it while it’s rolling. 

AD: That makes so much sense to me, especially as somebody who said earlier, like the universe speaks; because sometimes the universe speaks in little ways through the way a project comes together like that. You’ve built in, allow time for space, for dreaming and exploration, which is sometimes such a hard thing to do because time is money and people are on the clock and dreaming and exploration doesn’t really have, doesn’t respond to deadlines so much. 

RA: Yeah, that plays into the communication part because you have to manage expectations in order to be able to build something like this into something. So you have to be really honest from the beginning and be like, if you want this and you want it to happen and you want it to be beautiful and want it to be amazing and want it work well, then it’s going to take this long because I need to build in the time to develop it well and dream of it well and all those things. You kind of have to build in that time and be very honest and upfront about how long things take. You can’t cut the corners when it comes to this. It usually doesn’t work out.

AD: There are two things here that I think are crucial, well, it’s all crucial, but somebody has got to do the dirty work and make things happen, that’s rule number eight. I love that because it also implies that there’s no hierarchy, like we all just have to roll up our sleeves and do all the tasks associated with this. And number nine, no one should work for free, ever. Thank you for that! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Now I’m really interested in number 10, bad timing is a killer, what do you mean by that? 

RA: Time can kill something even if it has the best intentions attached to it and I’ve also realized that sometimes, you know, we’ve started projects with people that we’ve been very excited about and sometimes it’s all about timing. And the wrong time, the wrong place and you have to just accept, like you know what, it isn’t the right time to do this, let’s put it away and we’ll come back to it. And make sure that you come back to it when the right time comes. 

It’s just being really cognizant of all the forces around you. Time is an issue, time is a problem to deal with and so bad timing is a problem, it’s a thing, you know what I mean? It’s as important as good timing, you have to accept both. 

AD: I think a lot of people lose sight of that once they’ve already invested in time and energy into a project. They just really wanna, for their own reasons, wanna push it through, wanna check it off their list, wanna see it to fruition and -

RA: Yeah. 

AD: But sometimes you really do have to let it age on the shelf or something until it’s time to revisit it and from a new perspective, from a new space in time. 

RA: Yeah and cut your losses you know, for the time being. And solve the problem in a different way.  I always also learned when I, to have a backup plan. This comes from the PR world; you always have a backup plan. When you’re producing $3 million events and fashion shows and stuff, you take big risks, but you always have a fall-back position. You always, you have to. I carry that with me through all this process because there’s always the possibility that it’s not going to work. 

AD: And then there’s sometimes the possibility the backup plan starts to emerge as the better plan and then -

RA: A 100%. 

AD: Plan A becomes the backup plan.

RA: Yes, absolutely. 

AD: So, rules number 12 and 13, no agents or lawyers in the studio and check your ego at the door. And I love both of these because they speak to creating a safe place for creativity, for ideas that aren’t yet defensible because they’re still too nascent, they’re still too fledgling. And it also allows for experimentation and also for honesty because it doesn’t, you don’t have to worry that you’re triggering somebody’s, ruffling anybody’s feathers or triggering their worries about timing or money or who is responsible for what or how is this all going to get divvied up and allocated because none of that matters when you’re just trying to allow, like nurture an idea into its fullest potential. 

RA: Yeah, listen, as a pragmatist, I know that those conversations need to happen. They shouldn’t happen in the studio, they shouldn’t happen where your creative process is unfolding, right? So there’s a time and place and it’s recognizing that there is a time and place for those conversations. And so I’ve always been able to do both. I tend to be that person that does the dirty work. Because I’m fairly confident in it, after 30 years of being that person, all the time. Not only for myself but for others. 

RA: But I am very serious about the right time and the right place for it. It’s protecting the process basically. in order to protect the process you have to take certain conversations outside of it. But yeah, they’re necessary, those conversations are very necessary, for a number of reasons. Because in the end, you want everybody to be happy with the end result and people are not happy unless all of these things are ticked off, right? As you said before, one of our rules is that everyone needs to get paid and everybody has to get some sort of compensation for what they do, within that process. And figuring that out is important, it’s important to do ahead of time, so that there aren’t any false expectations and disappointments. 

And I have a pretty good track record with this. I mean I’m not saying it’s perfect, I think Steven and I have these really long term relationships with people because we’ve always protected the process and we’ve protected them. That’s really important to me, that’s how we build the family we have, of creatives, you know? 

By protecting their work and protecting them and in the process we’re protecting what’s ours as well. You can’t just protect what’s yours, you’ve got to protect -

AD: The whole thing. 

RA: I mean there’s another rule here which is, it’s always what’s best for the project. You’ve got to take yourself out of it, it’s not about you. 

AD: But this is about you, this conversation is about you Roman, so I wanna know where does the Roman Alonso story go from here? You seem like you’ve crafted a very fulfilling life for yourself and it’s full of handcrafted beauty and long term relationships and you know, warmth and travel, what’s missing, if anything? 

RA: Like we were saying before, this was really never about money, but it’s funny because just now, in the last couple of years after Steven and I have restructured and come back to the way we used to work initially, because in 16 years of this company we have lost our way a couple of times and we’ve learned some really hard lessons and we’ve lost a lot of money through them and learned how to protect that part of our business because there are two parts. 

There’s the financial part and then there’s the creative part and we would sometimes turn our back from the financial and in the end, by not paying attention to that, we’re hurting the creative. Again, you have to protect the process, right? And you can only do it if you have the financial; you’re solid in that area. 

AD: Yeah, the stability. 

RA: Just by what we have been able to do in the last four years in terms of restricting our firm, really putting our resources where it counts. Really looked at the things we love to do and how we like to do them. By really becoming cognizant of all that and taking the appropriate actions. All of these endeavours are financially viable now, right? So finally something has clicked, something has clicked and something is working and the shop is actually making money and it’s something that I feel like has, I finally feel like oh my god, this has legs, like this could actually become more.I see it as something that could expand out of the studio because we want to keep the studio small, we decided that. Like we’re going to be 20 people and that’s it and we even built our office for 20 people and that’s it, like we’re not gonna start adding people to do more projects, that’s not gonna happen. The studio is sacred in that it’s where we do our work and we wanna keep it feeling a certain way. We want to protect the process as it is because we enjoy it and the people that work with us enjoy it too, it’s working, so we’re not going to mess with that. But this shop part, this extension of it, which is a way for the public to sort of get to know and understand what we do and live with parts of what we do, all of a sudden feels like that could be more. 

So, what’s the next step? I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing because I love doing it? But I may actually expand on that and we’re really adding a lot of things to that world and are really open to doing more things. And now it’s not only working with people who are local, you know, our family has grown outside of California. So we’re working with a number of people that we met and worked with in Japan. 

We’re taking the opportunity to do that and create sort of a world there that we can bring here. And also looking at people in other places, like in the East Coast and in other countries, Europe. The world is a big place and there are a number of things that I think you can put in the silver lining folder of this last year of you know, hell [laughter]. 

AD: Right, just say it straight. 

RA: This year from hell! It does have some good things that’s come from it and one is the ability to work remotely better than we ever have before. 

That there’s always been that possibility because we’ve always worked remotely because we’ve always worked outside of Los Angeles. I mean I started working at Commune in Japan in 2009; we’ve done four projects in Japan. It’s not recent, so we’ve been working remotely for a long time. But we had no idea how to do it, really, we were doing it but we didn’t know how to do it well. And now we know. Now we know how to do this really well and this year has given us that and I’m going to use it. I’m going to use it to expand this family of creatives that can build on our world. We can build on our world together. It’s something that is really exciting to Steven and I - When we think about it, so that is going to be part of what the future holds, I think. 

AD: I am excited to hear you say that. I feel your energy there. I feel your excitement about growing this aspect of your relationships, the collaborations and the Commune Shop and of course we’ll include links to that and to Design Commune, the book about your work that’s out, we’ll include links to that in the show notes. And I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to share your whole story with us. It’s a gorgeous tapestry of you following your gravitational pull towards, and listening to the universe and I loved it. I was just rapt the whole time. 

RA: Well, thank you for the opportunity, you make it really fun. 

AD: Thanks for listening! To see images of Roman’s work and read the show notes, click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app, or go to Cleverpodcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter. Subscribe to Clever on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you would please do us a favor if you like Clever, rate and review us! It really does help people find us. We also love chatting with you on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, you can find us at Clever Podcast and you can find me at Amy Devers. Clever is produced by 2VDE Media with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is proudly  distributed by Design Milk. 

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Roman Alonso, photo by Christopher Sturman

What is your earliest memory?

Playing in a grove of coconut trees, the smell of fried fish and rum always takes me there.

How do you feel about democratic design? 

As opposed to what? Despotic design? Totalitarian design? Of course design should be, or at least strive to be, democratic.

Roman with his brother during Carnival in Caracas, 1973 (Roman is on the left)

Roman working on a book for Greybull Press with photographer Daniel Frasnay, Lyon, France 2001 (photo: Lisa Eisner)

Roman with Greybull Press co-founder and long-term friend and collaborator Lisa Eisner, 1999.

What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?

Shut up and listen.

How do you record your ideas?

I take iPhotos of my chicken scratch sketches and send them to my team, who turns them into something we can actually use.

What’s your current favorite tool or material to work with?

Japanese erasable Frixion pens and markers.

Living room, Berkeley Hills, CA, 2016 (photo: Trevor Tondro)

Roman’s reading nook at home, Los Angeles, CA, 2018 (photo: Stephen Kent Johnson)

What book is on your nightstand?

“Mike Nichols: A Life” by Mark Harris

Lobby, Ace Hotel, Kyoto, Japan 2020 (photo: Yoshi Makino)

Kitchen, Santa Cruz, CA 2020 (photo: Stephen Kent Johnson)

Why is authenticity in design important?

Authenticity is important in everything. Without authenticity there is pretense, and pretense is not only dangerous but unsustainable.

The Durham Hotel, Durham, NC, 2015. (photo: Spencer Lowell)

Bathroom, Santa Cruz, CA 2020 (photo: Stephen Kent Johnson)

Favorite restaurant in your city?

I haven’t been to a restaurant in over a year, the only restaurant I dream about is Chez Panisse…not in my city, but I wish it was.

What might we find on your desk right now?

Stacks of flagged books and magazines, paint fan decks, measuring tape, tracing paper, a bowl of pens and markers, earphones, several sketch pads, a pair of binoculars and my laptop.

Who do you look up to and why?

My mother, who has always faced adversity with grace, ingenuity and grit. She’s taught me to prepare for the future by staying grounded in the present and to focus on process, because in the end the experience is the only thing we can take with us.

What’s your favorite project that you’ve done and why?

I’m lucky, I have a lot of favorites.  But most recent favorite has to be the Ace in Kyoto, the five years working on it were like a dream. I got to travel with dear friends all over Japan meeting all kinds of amazing people making beautiful things, and the process, although very complex and difficult, was definitely gratifying.  I learned a lot, about a lot of things, and that’s my favorite thing.  I’m feeling a bit of nostalgia for it, actually.

Ottoman by Adam Pogue, 2017

Design Commune (Abrams, 2020)

Working with Steven and a colleague in the old West Hollywood Commune studio, 2012

Learning how to mud dye fabric in Amami, Japan, 2019

What are the last five songs you listened to?

“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” Bob Dylan
“Right” David Bowie
“Drown In My Own Tears” Aretha Franklin
“Oba, La Vem Ela” Jorge Ben Jor
“Never Too Much” Luther Vandross

Where can our listeners find you on the web and on social media?

communedesign.com
@communedesign

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Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.

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Clever is hosted and produced by Amy Devers. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Production assistance from Ilana Nevins and music by El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.

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